SQRP: Sensing Quality-aware Robot Programming System for Non-expert Programmers

TL;DR

This paper introduces SQRP, a system that assesses sensing quality to assist non-expert users in selecting robot skill parameters, enhancing safety and reliability in robot programming by considering sensor input quality.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel sensing quality-aware framework that guides non-experts in robot programming by automatically evaluating sensor input quality for better parameter selection.

Findings

Improves robot safety by monitoring sensor input quality.

Helps non-experts select appropriate skill parameters.

Demonstrated on a 6DOF robot arm for pick-up tasks.

Abstract

Robot programming typically makes use of a set of mechanical skills that is acquired by machine learning. Because there is in general no guarantee that machine learning produces robot programs that are free of surprising behavior, the safe execution of a robot program must utilize monitoring modules that take sensor data as inputs in real time to ensure the correctness of the skill execution. Owing to the fact that sensors and monitoring algorithms are usually subject to physical restrictions and that effective robot programming is sensitive to the selection of skill parameters, these considerations may lead to different sensor input qualities such as the view coverage of a vision system that determines whether a skill can be successfully deployed in performing a task. Choosing improper skill parameters may cause the monitoring modules to delay or miss the detection of important events such as a mechanical failure. These failures may reduce the throughput in robotic manufacturing and could even cause a destructive system crash. To address above issues, we propose a sensing quality-aware robot programming system that automatically computes the sensing qualities as a function of the robot's environment and uses the information to guide non-expert users to select proper skill parameters in the programming phase. We demonstrate our system framework on a 6DOF robot arm for an object pick-up task.