Multimedia communication pendant for robotic task teaching by sharing information

In robot task teaching systems, an important role is played by the communication channel and media which transfer conscious, nonverbal information to transfer the operator/user's intention about the task to the robot system. A new multimedia communication pendant (MC pendant) system for robotic task teaching is described. With this system, the operator and robot can share information about the task and environment through nonverbal media. Information from the robot's internal and external sensors is immediately displayed to the operator. The sensor data can then be directly manipulated to improve data reliability. This allows a task path to be generated that reflects the operator's intentions. Experimental results show that the MC pendant improves operational accuracy and greatly reduces the number of operations compared with conventional pendant operation. When using the MC pendant, human pattern recognition and feature pointing abilities greatly simplify the teaching operation. Experimental results show that this new type of teaching pendant accurately conveys the operator's intentions during robotic task programming and improves its operability greatly.