Intuitive robot programming

While making demos of what the Sixi arm can do I discovered that I’m a terrible driver. More than a few times I wanted to drive the hand +X and instead rotated the wrist, or got the direction wrong. It might not seem like much now but if it were holding a cup of liquid or in a narrow confine that would be very bad for the end user!

A good fix would be a way to preview a move before committing to that move, and maybe having some kind of undo feature. Now by moving the joystick the blue “ghost” arm moves while the yellow “live” arm stays still. When you like the pose you’ve reached, press X on the playstation controller to commit that move. If you want to undo – put the ghost back on the live arm – press the circle button on the playstation controller. Lastly if you want to drive the arm back to the starting position, triangle button will move the ghost to the starting position and then X would commit the move.

Let me know in the comments how is your experience with driving the simulation. I will be dedicating the next few weeks getting ready for the Vancouver Mini Maker Fair, September 14, 2019 at Science World.