Predictive control for robot arm teleoperation

This paper presents a robotic welding teleoperation system that can learn the skilled welder´s behavior and transfer human intelligence into welding robots. In this system a 6-DOF robot arm is equipped with a compact 3D weld pool sensing system. The motion of the human welder movement is tracked accurately by the Leap sensor. A predictive control algorithm is proposed to control the speed of the robot arm movement. Tracking experiments are conducted to track pre-set movement with varying speed and human hand movement. It is found that the robot with the proposed speed control algorithm is able to track human hand movement with acceptable accuracy. A foundation is thus established to realize welding teleoperation and transfer human intelligence to the welding robot.