Robotic Manipulation with a Human in the Loop – Accuracy Comparison and Analysis

To truly make automation economical, there needs to be a shift in robotic performance: from highly specific at one task to general-purpose across many tasks. Unfortunately, such additional functionality is not cost-effective without a sacrifice in performance. In the case of robotics, it is a sacrifice in accuracy. This paper first investigates an industry analysis of a general-purpose robot to outline its merits and drawbacks as a competitive product. The paper then delves into more technical detail about how to accommodate the robot's lack in accuracy. Specifically, our method of implementation is to have the robot self-detect when it is too inaccurate to proceed with a task and subsequently request assistance from the human. Here, we utilize the fine-grained capabilities of a human, relatively, in synergistic combination with the efficiency of an inexpensive robot.