Interactive Human-Robot Collaboration Using Kinect

I've been doing this Kinect hack blogging deal for a good 9 months now. I'd like to think I've seen pretty much everything that's out there that involves a hacked Kinect and that I'm getting a little desensitized to all the great work that's going on. This latest hack however gave me the shivers based on how truly impressive the entire operation is. Let me break it down for you. The overall purpose of this Kinect hack is to control a robot arm, not so much with your skeletal tracked gestures, but more as an assistant that knows where your hands are and helps accomplish certain tasks.

With a Kinect propped up above a table with projected virtual buttons displayed below, the user is able to issue commands to the robot by selecting a series of buttons. These buttons allow you to:

• Direct the robotic arms position
• Have it detect and avoid your hand
• Save the current position of the robot arm

The software also provides robot supported assembly. This works by having a pre-set plan projected onto the table. The worker then prepares the parts by following the plan on the table. The user can then activate the robot which will then proceed to assist in the assembly of the project. It does this by handing components to the worker that correctly follow the sequence of the assembly plan. The robotic hand over is able to dynamically change based on where the workers hand is thanks to the kinect tracking data.

It will also indicate which section needs to be assembled in the correct order by severing as I sort of real-time reference. Once the assembly has been completed, new product variants can be loaded in order to move on to the next task.

For more on this project visit http://www6.in.tum.de/Main/ResearchJahir