Human-robot Collaboration for the Trajectory Planning of Multi-axis 3D Printing

In traditional industrial robot trajectory planning, operators typically rely on teach pendant pen or pre-programmed instructions to define highly precise trajectories. This paper proposes a vision-aided human-robot collaboration (HRC) system to enhance the trajectory planning of multi-axis 3D printing for complex geometries. By integrating HTC VIVE trackers and a 3D camera, a novel HRC trajectory planning workflow has been proposed in this paper, which can capture human hand moving trajectories for the generation of a robotic toolpaths with high accuracy. The performance of the printing system was validated through the 3D printing of U-shaped and X-shaped plastic parts on a steel bracket. The combination of human creativity and robot precision enables the realization of more accurate and customized trajectory planning tasks.