Development of a VR-based Manipulation System for Dual-arm Robots

Following its applications on reception, space exploration, health care, and others, the dual-arm robot is employed for industrial automation more intensively these days. With a human-like two-arm structure of high degrees of freedom, it should be a strong competitor for industrial tasks of high complexity. However, up to date, its deployment is still far behind the traditional single-arm robot manipulator. It may be partially due to its higher price and larger installation space. Meanwhile, the lack of proper methods or devices to deal with task planning and teaching that usually involves robot motions of more than 10 DOF is also influential. Motivated by it, in this paper, we propose a novel manipulation system for the industrial dual-arm robot manipulator using virtual reality (VR). Especially, we propose taking advantage of the similarity between the dual-arm robot and human arm and come up with a human-like path planner, with an intention to incorporate that of human into robot path planning. In addition, we also furnish the system with several assistive tools, including that for physical behavior emulation and self-collision detection. Simulations based on realistic environments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed manipulation system, along with the questionnaires to evaluate user's responses.