What is Human-Machine Interface

This chapter proposes a framework to make the programming of cobots faster, user-friendly and flexible for assembly tasks. The work focusses on an industrial case of a small (10kg) air compressor and investigates the technologies that can be used to automate this task with human-robot collaboration. To this end, the framework takes a radically different approach at the motion stack level and integrates the cobot with a constraint-based robot programming paradigm that enhances the robot programming possibilities. Additionally, the framework takes inputs from the operator via speech recognition and computer vision to increase the intuitiveness of the programing process. An implementation is made with focus on industrial robustness and the results show that this framework is a promising approach for the overall goal of achieving flexible assembly in the factories by making robot programming faster and intuitive.