Robotic manipulation is currently undergoing a profound paradigm shift due to the increasing needs for flexible manufacturing systems, and at the same time, because of the advances in enabling technologies such as sensing, learning, optimization, and hardware. This demands for robots that can observe and reason about their workspace, and that are skillfull enough to complete various assembly processes in weakly-structured settings. Moreover, it remains a great challenge to enable operators for teaching robots on-site, while managing the inherent complexity of perception, control, motion planning and reaction to unexpected situations. Motivated by real-world industrial applications, this paper demonstrates the potential of such a paradigm shift in robotics on the industrial case of an e-Bike motor assembly. The paper presents a concept for teaching and programming adaptive robots on-site and demonstrates their potential for the named applications. The framework includes: (i) a method to teach perception systems onsite in a self-supervised manner, (ii) a general representation of object-centric motion skills and force-sensitive assembly skills, both learned from demonstration, (iii) a sequencing approach that exploits a human-designed plan to perform complex tasks, and (iv) a system solution for adapting and optimizing skills online. The aforementioned components are interfaced through a four-layer software architecture that makes our framework a tangible industrial technology. To demonstrate the generality of the proposed framework, we provide, in addition to the motivating e-Bike motor assembly, a further case study on dense box packing for logistics automation.

翻译：机器人操作正经历深刻范式转变，其驱动力一方面来自柔性制造系统日益增长的需求，另一方面来自传感、学习、优化与硬件等使能技术的进步。这要求机器人能够观察和推理其工作空间，并具备足够技能以在弱结构化环境中完成各类装配流程。此外，让操作人员能够在现场教授机器人，同时管理感知、控制、运动规划及应对突发状况的固有复杂性，仍是一大挑战。受实际工业应用驱动，本文以电动自行车电机装配这一工业案例，展示了机器人领域此类范式转变的潜力。文章提出了一种现场编程自适应机器人的教学概念，并论证了其在所述应用中的潜力。该框架包括：（i）以自监督方式实现现场感知系统教学的方法；（ii）基于演示学习的物体中心运动技能与力敏感装配技能的通用表征；（iii）利用人工设计规划完成复杂任务的序列化方法；（iv）在线自适应与优化技能的系统解决方案。上述组件通过四层软件架构实现交互，使该框架成为切实可行的工业技术。为证明所提框架的通用性，除电动自行车电机装配这一案例外，本文还补充了物流自动化中密集箱体堆叠的案例研究。