Programming-by-demonstration in the coworker scenario for SMEs

Programming‐by‐demonstration (PbD) is the possibility to program a robot just by showing what it is supposed to do and how it should do it. This paper reports a collection of developments that enable users to program industrial robots using speech, several device interfaces, force control and code generation techniques. The reported system is explained in detail and a few practical examples are given that demonstrate its usefulness for SMEs, where robots and humans need to cooperate to achieve a common goal (coworker scenario). The paper also explores the user interface software adapted to be used by non‐expert users.