Performance Evaluation of Optical Motion Capture Sensors for Assembly Motion Capturing

The optical motion capture (MoCap) sensor provides an effective way to capture human motions and transform them into valuable data that can be applied to certain tasks, e.g. robot learning from demonstration (LfD). In spite of the wide utilization of optical MoCaps in LfD studies, there are few works that explore their potentiality in small parts robotic assembly. Robot manipulation skill learning from demonstration has gained the attention of researchers recently and robotic 3C (Computer, Communication, and Consumer Electronics) product assembly turns out to be a promising application thanks to the increasing consumption of 3C products. To further explore the potential of optical MoCaps in robotic 3C product assembly. This work proposes a performance evaluation protocol that takes the characters of both optical MoCaps and 3C product assembly operations into account. The proposed evaluation protocol includes static and trajectory evaluations. The former refers to the widely used evaluation indicators such as precision and accuracy. Meanwhile, the trajectory evaluation takes contour error as an error metric. Three popular optical MoCaps are studied in the experiment. Experiment results show that the static performance of all of the three optical MoCaps can meet the requirements of the 3C product assembly task. What’s more, Prime X41 possesses the best trajectory performance. This work sheds light on the wider usage of optical MoCaps in manufacturing industries.