An interactive GUI for a dual-robot command console

Abstract

Interactive robotics has found better acceptability in sectors other than manufacturing & production. Robot assisted surgery, bomb diffusion, space exploration and nuclear waste management are a few such applications where robots are used interactively and not merely as a dumb preprogrammed device doing repeated movements. In these applications, the robot does not replace the human operator but it complements the operatorpsilas skill and ensures his/ her safety. The users, in such cases, are specialists in their own fields like surgeons, chemists or mechanics but certainly not expert programmers or robotics engineers. Such users need a GUI that can accept input using scroll-bar and spin buttons and maneuver the end-effector as required. We describe here a GUI console we have developed for a pair of robots working with online instructions to position the end-effectors.