A Cooperative HCI Assembly Station with Dynamic Projections

This paper presents a cooperative human–computer interaction (HCI) assembly station which is assisting a worker during a manual assembly process. The worker’s identity, body pose and height is determined to provide individualized assistance like a robot arm which is holding workpieces in a position which is ergonomic for the worker. A second robot arm is equipped with a camera and projector to precisely project information directly on the workpiece. Safe and intuitive human–robot collaboration is achieved by means of workspace monitoring, force detection, compliant control, and hand-guiding. A distinctive feature of this assembly station is that new assembly steps and documentation can be added interactively directly at the workstation during an assembly by interacting with the projected GUI through hand gestures. This paper will detail an assembly station that was developed in a laboratory environment.