Robotic arm for car dashboard layout assessment in Mixed Reality environment

Mixed Reality (MR) technologies allow us to create different environments, by merging real and virtual objects, and can be successfully used for the assessment of industrial products during the product development phases. This paper describes the integration of a MR environment including an industrial robotic arm for the ergonomics assessment of the driving seat in the automotive field. The robotic arm has been used to configure the MR environment automatically while guaranteeing the correct merging between real and virtual objects and the repeatability of the testing sessions. The user's presence, near an industrial robot, arises some issues on the safety and on the human-robot interaction that we have been addressed in order to improve the performing of the ergonomic test. Finally, the developed system has been validated through some testing sessions with end users to verify the effectiveness of our solution.