On the Efficiency, Usability, and Intuitiveness of a Wearable, Affordable, Open-Source, Generic Robot Teaching Interface

Abstract

Modern collaborative and industrial robots are typically accompanied by proprietary control interfaces, which may also offer basic teaching functionality. However, many such interfaces are not suited for frequent reconfiguration of the robot system, which is essential in agile manufacturing and research. To flatten the learning curve between different interface variants and efficiently integrate external components into the process, generic robot teaching interfaces can be utilized. This paper proposes a new wearable, open-source, robot teaching interface and focuses on evaluating and comparing it with other affordable generic robot teaching interfaces in assembly task programming. Wireless input devices, including a standard keyboard, a gaming console controller, and a 6D mouse have been considered. The devices are compared in terms of perceived usability, subjective workload, and time efficiency when programming insertion tasks through a waypoint-based teaching scheme.