Today’s machinery is controlled by clunky levers and buttons. Most often, operators are having a hard time syncing their coordination with the machines. But now, as a new era of motion-control arrives, the Kinect can change the way we operate, the way we control machines. With the Kinect, precision handling of these constructs are on their way as users and operators can finally control machines through motion-based commands. This video release by SynapticRobotics shows one of these industrial robots, the ABB industrial robot working in conjunction with the user’s hand movements. The user’s physical actions control the ABB robot from a distance, assuring the user of safety and if further developed, precision in processes. This is indeed a glimpse of the future where Kinect and operations coincide with each other.
“Right now it only does X Y Z. I plan to add yaw, pitch, roll in a future version.
I basically combined the example code provided with the PrimeSense middleware with the serial code in OpenFrameworks to send the hand position data to the robot.”
For more information about this project, visit Kinect Industrial ABB Robot Youtube Page.