Flexible telemanipulation based handy robot teaching on tape masking with complex geometry

Traditional robot teaching methods are cumbersome, tedious and difficult to scale for high-mix low-volume applications. The tape masking, a common process for surface protection before plasma spraying, spray painting and shot peening, is one of those domains where robotic automation lacks flexibility and reliability due to the complexity in task. Fortunately, it is still within the grasps of human-robot collaborative systems. This work presents a telemanipulation-based robot teaching framework that is able to let the robot manipulator cope with the taping tasks with complex workpiece geometries. The proposed framework allows quick calibration, variable motion mapping, and indexing so that the operators can easily set up and guide the robotic taping system to cover the tapes onto the layers and grooves of different workpieces. This framework enables the operators to change the motion mapping scale for both large-scale guidance and fine motion dexterous manipulation. Meanwhile, an indexing function makes it possible for the operators to re-map their poses from the edges of their comfortable regions. A portable VR system is applied in the telemanipulation system. With its six DoF motion precisely measured in real-time, the proposed motion remapping algorithms enable the operators to directly guide the robot in their selected scales. Experimental results show that the proposed framework facilitates robot programming on the manipulation of the complex workpieces that have multi-layer surfaces and grooves in between. It also reduces the teaching time comparing to other methods. This system and method improve teaching efficiency and convenience, which has potential value to be deployed in manufacturing.