Enhancing Robot Programming through Digital Twin and Augmented Reality

Abstract

Nowadays, robots are widespread across diverse application contexts. However, robot programming is a cumbersome and error-prone task that requires a high domain and programming expertise. To simplify the process of robot programming, we combine Augmented Reality (AR) with the concept of Digital Twin (DT). By combining them, the robot system can be simulated through a digital equivalent representation while the real environment is extended with useful virtual artifacts. To enable users to work in the robot space, reducing the amount of mentally taxing coordinate space conversions, we have developed the DT- and AR-based robot programming framework, called DART. DART supports users to program a robot through interactive gestures, offers AR in-place program simulation, and direct building of finished programs to the real robot. We evaluated our AR-based programming approach regarding usability compared to a web-based robot programming approach. The evaluation showed that our approach is more usable than the conventional method and has the potential to enrich and ease current robot programming processes.