A team from ROBOTICS explored ways of conveying complex content about working with robotic arms in a playful, efficient, and easily understandable way\u2014in other words, learning in extended reality (XR). This saves time and money. Robotic arms \u2013 also known as manipulators \u2013 are now an indispensable feature of many industries. They can be found performing welding, assembly and painting tasks in automotive manufacturing, populating circuit boards in electronics production, and picking and packing goods in logistics. They are also used in food processing, pharmaceuticals, and recycling \u2013 anywhere that involves precision, repetition or physically demanding operations. As a result, workers in these sectors need continuous upskilling to ensure that they are able to work safely and effectively alongside their new mechanical colleagues. The fundamentals of robotic arms \u2013 their structure, movement and kinematics \u2013 can be hard to compute for humans.<\/p>\n
In an EU-funded project dubbed MANIPULAY XR, Bernhard Reiterer and a team from ROBOTICS in Klagenfurt joined forces with design and technology studio POLYCULAR to lower this particular barrier to entry. Built on the MASTER XR platform, the project delivers an intuitive virtual reality environment that lets users build and program robotic arms. XR is an umbrella term for a number of immersive technologies, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). All of these tools help to bring digital content to life within real or virtual settings. In the case of \nMANIPULAY XR, the power of XR is harnessed as an interactive channel for communicating technical content relating to robotic arms.<\/p>\n
Bernhard Reiterer explains how it works: \"Everything revolves around interactive puzzle-based learning sequences. Learners combine basic components \u2013 joints, links, and grippers \u2013 to solve predefined challenges, such as generating collision-free waypoint sequences. Programming centres on a block-based interface, where different cubes represent the movements of individual joints. A virtual 3D printer even allows users to create their own programming elements. Through repeated adjustments to both the design of the robot and the program itself, users gain intuitive insights into kinematics and control.\"\nA conscious decision was taken to give the system an open and modular design. Besides offering pre-designed learning paths, MANIPULAY\u202fXR also supports the development of custom task formats. \"Our project provides ready-made learning paths as examples and gives educators the tools they need to design their own puzzles \u2013 based on various scenarios such as a real-world robot model or one of the kinematic systems that is outlined in the literature,\" Reiterer continues. The platform also facilitates the flexible integration of additional content such as text, video and audio guides.<\/p>\n
by Elke Zenz<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ein Team von ROBOTICS erforschte M\u00f6glichkeiten, komplexe Inhalte \u00fcber die Arbeit mit Roboterarmen auf spielerische, effiziente und leicht verst\u00e4ndliche Art zu vermitteln – also Lernen in der Extended Reality (XR). Das ist zeit- und kostensparend. Roboterarme \u2013 sogenannte Manipulatoren \u2013 sind heute aus vielen Branchen nicht mehr wegzudenken. Sie \u00fcbernehmen Schwei\u00df-, Montage- oder Lackierarbeiten in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":93760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4662,4657,4660,4658,4659,4147,4661],"class_list":["post-93756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","tag-erweiterte-realitaet","tag-extended-reality","tag-gamification","tag-lernen","tag-manipulay-xr","tag-robotik","tag-xr","institutes-robotics","business_areas-produktion-und-fertigung"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93756"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105401,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93756\/revisions\/105401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More<\/h3>\n
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