Design and Evaluation of an Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Display Interface for Human Robot Teams Collaborating in Physically Shared Manufacturing Tasks

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental evaluation of an augmented reality interface for human-robot teams in shared manufacturing tasks, demonstrating benefits in reducing physical demand and increasing robot utilization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel AR interface for collaborative human-robot manufacturing tasks and evaluates its effectiveness compared to traditional controls.

Findings

AR reduces physical demand and task completion time

AR increases robot utilization

Users find AR more novel but less dependable

Abstract

We provide an experimental evaluation of a wearable augmented reality (AR) system we have developed for human-robot teams working on tasks requiring collaboration in shared physical workspace. Recent advances in AR technology have facilitated the development of more intuitive user interfaces for many human-robot interaction applications. While it has been anticipated that AR can provided a more intuitive interface to robot assistants helping human workers in various manufacturing scenarios, existing studies in robotics have been largely limited to teleoperation and programming. Industry 5.0 envisions cooperation between human and robot working in teams. Indeed, there exist many industrial task that can benefit from human-robot collaboration. A prime example is high-value composite manufacturing. Working with our industry partner towards this example application, we evaluated our AR interface design for shared physical workspace collaboration in human-robot teams. We conducted a multi-dimensional analysis of our interface using establish metrics. Results from our user study (n=26) show that subjectively, the AR interface feels more novel and a standard joystick interface feels more dependable to users. However, the AR interface was found to reduce physical demand and task completion time, while increasing robot utilization. Furthermore, user's freedom of choice to collaborate with the robot may also affect the perceived usability of the system.