Remote rapid manufacturing with “action media” as an advanced user interface

The motion of the operator´s fingers has been tracked by a real-time tracking vision system to provide a user interface to a machine tool. The desired cutter position is determined from the finger position and the machine tool path is controlled to follow. The system provides an environment where a machining center can be controlled remotely without any special apparatus, such as a master manipulator. Thus, the user interface described in this paper is one of the crucial technologies for “technology transfer with real feeling”. Experimental results show the effectiveness and the performance of the developed system