ROS-based Augmented and Virtual Reality path planning interface for industrial robotic arms: A preliminary assessment

Optimised human machine interfaces for multi-robot systems are essential for human in the loop in cyber-physical production lines and collaborative systems. The speed of changeover and customized production processes together with the need for straightforward easy and user-friendly human-machine interaction methods demands natural and adaptable interfaces. They should be based on flexible software cores and packages that ease and speed up the development processes. This also applies to laboratory testing and assessment in the academic field, in particular when it comes to the deployment of virtual or augmented reality (AR/VR) interfaces. The standardization of human-robot interaction including control methods in the extended reality domain is a work in progress. It needs broader assessment and clearer metrics to realise efficient and reliable tools. This work presents an Extended Reality (XR) user interface for the control and teleoperation of industrial robots. The systems allows the fast integration of the digital twins of robotic arms and path planning interface in AR and VR using Robot Operating System and Unity. Furthermore, a design-of-experiment involving two different robots (ABB IRB 1200 and ABB IRB 1600) in the two geographically distributed locations is proposed along with some preliminary experimental results.