A Comparison of Types of Robot Control for Programming by Demonstration

Abstract

Programming by Demonstration (PbD) is an efficient way for non-experts to teach new skills to a robot. PbD can be carried out in different ways, for instance, by kinesthetic guidance, teleoperation or by using external controls. In this paper, we compare these three ways of controlling a robot in terms of efficiency, effectiveness (success and error rate) and usability. In an industrial assembly scenario, 51 participants carried out peg-in-hole tasks using one of the three control modalities. The results show that kinesthetic guidance produces the best results. In order to test whether the problems during teleoperation are due to the fact that users cannot, like in kinesthetic guidance, switch between control points using traditional teleoperation devices, we designed a new device that allows users to switch between controls for large and small movements. A user study with 15 participants shows that the novel teleoperation device yields almost as good results as kinesthetic guidance.