Using hand gestures to interact with an industrial robot in a cooperative flexible manufacturing scenario

Gesture recognition is a booming field of interest for many researchers. The Human-Machine Interaction developed from using wired devices such as the mouse and the keyboard till using touch screens and nowadays is evolving to the gesture interaction. Simultaneously, the machine or the industrial robot in particular is developing as well. The usual trend of using an industrial robot in a typical factory is to isolate it from the workers during the operation, due to the safety regulations. However, nowadays a new generation of a safe cooperative industrial robot exists. These robots are no longer dangerous to work around the humans. In a flexible manufacturing system, a cooperative scenario between the worker and the industrial robot can achieve the flexible manufacturing objectives. Therefore, during this research we propose and implement a holonic control system architecture which connects the industrial robot with the worker together in the same work environment in a flexible cooperative scenario. Moreover, we use the worker hand gestures to generate control events associated with the worker activities. Accordingly, the interaction between the worker and the industrial robot can be established.