Högskolan i Skövde

In recent years Mixed Reality technology has been widely used to enhance operators in manual assembly operations. This paper introduces a Mixed Reality environment for assembly operations and describes how the process can be supported by virtual sensors. The structure of the environment allows seamless adaption from a fully virtual training scenario, only using virtual assets, to a full production scenario supporting operators in assembling physical products in actual production. The training system which has been developed together with the company Skandia Elevator in Sweden enables the operators to train with much less disturbance to the real production line compared to training using the actual production equipment. In fact, the training can be done only using virtual assets.

This paper presents a Mixed reality (MR) environment to support industrial cobots programming for welding purposes. Several intuitive menus allow a user to program the path, which can be configured and simulated in the virtual environment with reachability checking. A guide can be activated to show recommended steps and allows validation of the created program on the virtual robot to aid the learning process. The MR application is integrated with a robot programming platform and a robot controller, that allows the user to test paths on a real robot. Moreover, results from spatial accuracy and user experience evaluations are presented.

This paper presents a Mixed Reality (MR) approach to extend the Safe Move tool from ABB Robot Studio (RS) to view and intuitively edit the safety configuration, allowing the import of existing configurations and the export of modified ones to RS for certification by the expert. The added virtual sensor can detect the user's position allowing collision detection and avoidance. The robot's motion is not only adjusted to the safety zone in which the robot is but also to its relative position to the operator by monitoring in real-time positions of the operator’s hands as well as head and triggering appropriate action in the robot.