Finger pointer based human machine interaction for selected quality checks of industrial work pieces

Interaction between humans and machines, especially robots becomes more and more important in industrial production and quality managing processes. We developed a demonstrator system for selected quality checks of industrial work pieces using a special kind of human gesture, the finger pointer, for the communication with the robot-guided measure-ment system. The demonstrator consists of two optical 3D scanners, a six-axis-robot (mounted on a mobile platform) and a master system (PC and the necessary software modules which realises the communication between the components). The interaction between the human and the machine is realized using the so-called interaction sensor, which is one of the optical 3D scanners. The main feature of this scanner is the detection of the position on the surface of a work piece where the humans finger points to. The robust results of the pointer location determination show a good fitting for the application of the demonstrator system for s elected quality checks of industrial work pieces.