Human–robot cooperation in sorting of randomly distributed objects

The paper presents the possibilities of teaching a robot controller to perform operations of autonomous segregation of objects differing in features that can be identified using a vision system. Objects can be arranged freely on the robot scene also covered with others. In the learning phase, a robot operator presents the segregation method by moving subsequent objects held in a human hand, e. g. a red object to container A, a green object to container B, etc. The robot system, after recognizing the idea of segregation that is being done using the vision system, continues this work in an autonomous way, until all identified objects will be removed from robotic scene. There are no restrictions on the dimensions, shapes and placement of containers collecting segregated objects. The developed algorithms were verified on a test bench equipped with two modern robots KUKA LBR iiwa 14 R820.