Trajectory Learning and Demonstration of a Robot Manipulator Based-on Sensor Fusion from a Hand-held Tool

This paper presents a programming system for a robot manipulator using a hand-held demonstration tool. In this system, a user holds the self-designed tool to demonstrate a desired motion path, and the robot arm replicates the learned trajectory. The path-demonstration tool, including optical tags (OT) and an IMU, is designed to collect trajectory data from hand motion. Sensor data fusion allows the system to track accurately the demonstrated trajectory. A calibration procedure is proposed to transform the trajectory from tool’s coordinate system to robot’s coordinate system. A cubic spline-based trajectory planning method is proposed to ensure smooth reproduction of the learned trajectory in both time and space. Experimental results show that the robot is able to replicate squared and curved trajectories collected from the path-demonstration tool. The average position error is within 2.435 mm in XYZ directions and the average orientation error is within 0.65 degrees.