Augmented Reality (AR) based framework for supporting human workers in flexible manufacturing

Abstract This paper presents an Augmented Reality (AR) application that aims to facilitate the operator’s work in an industrial, human-robot collaboration environment with mobile robots. In such a flexible environment, with robots and humans working and moving in the same area, the ease of communication between the two sides is critical and prerequisite. The developed application provides the user with handy tools to interact with the mobile platform, give direct instructions to it and receive information about the robot’s and the broader system’s state, through an AR headset. The communication between the headset and the robot is achieved through a ROS based system, that interconnects the resources. The discussed tool has been deployed and tested in a use case inspired from the automotive industry, assisting the operators during the collaborative assembly tasks.