Programming by demonstration by optical tracking system for dual arm robot

In this paper, a PbD (Programming by Demonstration) experiment platform is setup based on a dual arm robot and an motion tracking system. A PbD method based on optical tracking system is implemented and tested on this platform. This method uses motion tracking sensor to capture operator arms motion and then let robot to imitate operator arm motion. At the same time, robot motion is logged, optimized and the robot program is generated automatically by a computing device or the robot controller itself. It can speed up robot programming and reduce the learning difficulty of robot programming greatly by just demonstrating action sequences to robot, and furthermore, it can save investment for dual arm robot or multi robot programming by reducing tailored fixtures. It is very easy to use for a process expert who knows a little about robot. The advantage of this method is that it can program more than one robot at the same time and can reduce robot programming difficulty. This method especially fits for dual arm robot and multi robot cooperation programming, but it also can be used for single arm robot. Experiment result shows that robot can follow operator's motion accurately and the time delay is acceptable for some application such as teaching, so it's feasible to apply PbD method on industrial robot.