Interface architecture design for minimum programming in human-robot collaboration

Many metal components, especially large-sized ones, need to be ground or deburred after turning or milling to improve the surface qualities, which heavily depends on human interventions. Robot arms, combining movable platforms, are applied to reduce the human work. However, robots and human should work together due to the fact that most of the large-sized parts belong to small-batch products, resulting in a large number of programming for operating a robot and movable platform. Targeting the problem, this paper proposes a new interface architecture towards minimum programming in human-robot collaboration. Within the context, a four-layer architecture is designed: user interface, function block (FB), functional modules and hardware. The user interface is associated with use cases. Then, FB, with embedded algorithms and knowledge and driven by events, is to provide a dynamic link to the relevant application interface (APIs) of the functional modules in terms of the case requirements. The functional modules are related to the hardware and software functions; and the hardware and humans are considered in terms of the conditions on shop floors. This method provides three-level applications based on the skills of users: (1) the operators on shop floors, can operate both robots and movable platforms programming-freely; (2) engineers are able to customise the functions and tasks by dragging/dropping and linking the relevant FBs with minimum programming; (3) the new functions can be added by importing the APIs through programming