Look Ahead: Point-and-click robot control

It takes knowledge and skill to get a robot to do exactly what a manufacturer wants it to—and those are hard to come by in this skills-gap era. Even the most competently programmed and automated robot will sometimes need a human operator to take control.

A new interface designed by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers is reportedly simpler and more efficient than most control interfaces and doesn’t require significant training. The user simply points and clicks on an item, then chooses a grasping method. The robot does the rest of the work.

With a traditional interface, an operator independently controls six degrees of freedom with a computer, turning three virtual rings and adjusting arrows to get the robot into position to grab items or perform a specific task.

Point-and-click control makes robot operation literally easier to grasp. Image courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology.

With the Georgia Tech interface, “instead of a series of rotations, lowering and raising arrows, adjusting the grip and guessing the correct depth of field, we’ve shortened the process to just two clicks,” stated Sonia Chernova, assistant professor at the university’s School of Interactive Computing who advised the research effort.