PATI: A Projection-based Augmented Table-Top Interface for Robot Programming

As robots begin to provide daily assistance to individuals in human environments, their end-users, who do not necessarily have substantial technical training or backgrounds in robotics or programming, will ultimately need to program and ``re-task'' their robots to perform a variety of custom tasks. In this work, we present PATI---a Projection-based Augmented Table-top Interface for robot programming---through which users are able to use simple, common gestures (e.g., pinch gestures) and tools (e.g., shape tools) to specify table-top manipulation tasks (e.g., pick-and-place) for a robot manipulator. PATI allows users to interact with the environment directly when providing task specifications; for example, users can utilize gestures and tools to annotate the environment with task-relevant information, such as specifying target landmarks and selecting objects of interest. We conducted a user study to compare PATI with a state-of-the-art, standard industrial method for end-user robot programming. Our results show that participants needed significantly less training time before they felt confident in using our system than they did for the industrial method. Moreover, participants were able to program a robot manipulator to complete a pick-and-place task significantly faster with PATI. This work indicates a new direction for end-user robot programming.