Simplified Programming of Re-Usable Skills on a Safe Industrial Robot - Prototype and Evaluation

This paper presents a study on iconic programming support for mainly position-based lead-through programming of an ABB YuMi collaborative robot. A prototype tool supporting a hybrid programming and execution mode was developed and evaluated with 21 non-expert users with varying programming and robotics experience. We also present a comparison of the programming times for an expert robot programmer using traditional tools versus the new tool. The expert programmed the same tasks in 1/5 of the time compared to traditional tools and the non-experts were able to program and debug a LEGO building task using the robot within 30 minutes.