Recognizing assembly tasks using face-contact relations

A novel method for programming a robot, called the assembly-plan-from-observation (APO) method, is proposed. The APO method aims to build a system that has the capability of observing a human performing an assembly task, understanding the task based on the observation, and generating the robot program to achieve the same task. Assembly relations that serve as the basic representation of each assembly task are defined. It is verified that such assembly relations can be recovered from the observation of human assembly tasks, and that from such assembly relations it is possible to generate robot motion commands to repeat the same assembly task. An APO system based on the assembly relations is demonstrated