Project Group: VARobot

Supervisor: Enes Yigitbas, Ivan Jovanovikj

Motivation

In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) have grown as a media for interactive applications. While the main idea behind VR is to trick the user’s senses to feel present in a virtual environment, AR is a user interface metaphor, which allows for interweaving digital data with physical spaces.

Both VR and AR techniques are applied in different domains (engineering, entertainment or education & training) and provide a cognitive assistance for various activities (maintenance, programming, configuration etc.). Especially in the context of robot programming, AR provides several advantages in the programming process. The programmer gets instant real-time, visual feedback of a simulated process in relation to the real object, resulting in reduced programming time and increased quality of the resulting robot program. On the other side, VR can support programming and teleoperation to remotely control robotic systems resulting in a safe and flexible interaction environment. Using synergy effects of VR and AR can help to better support the task of robot programming in a collaborative way.

Main goal of the project group is to design and implement VR/AR interfaces and environments to assist robot programming regarding different aspects such as programming, debugging or documentation.

The robot programming environment shall focus on the Dobot Magician system which can be represented through a digital twin, in the form of a 3D Model, and configured in a VR environment as well as projected via AR techniques in the working environment to support the programming task. To enable a collaborative programming environment in VR and AR, the implemented VR and AR interfaces should be integrated in a common programming environment which allows collaborative programming of robotic systems.

Task

Literature research on the topics VR, AR, and Robot Programming
Conceptualisation and Design of VR and AR interfaces for Robot Programming
Prototypical Implementation of a collaborative Programming Environment (VR+AR) for the Dobot Magician System
Experiment-based evaluation of the implemented approach

Requirements

Sound programming skills in an object-oriented language, e.g. Java, C#
3D Programming, experience with Unity Engine
Robot Programming, experience with ROS
Motivation to work in an agile team, self-organize yourself, and be creative!

Course information

The project group will be conducted in English (unless all participants agree with the German language)
Computer science (CS) and engineering (CE) students are welcome
- CS students get 20 ECTS, CE students 18 ECTS