Implementation of a Voice-Assisted Collaborative Robot in a Production Assembly Line

As the world is moving from a manual workforce to a robot-based workforce, there is a huge scope for improved methods to make production lines more efficient. In this work, an effort is made to implement human-robot collaboration into an industrial process and is demonstrated with a flange assembly-line model. This paper explains how the Yolov4 algorithm was improved and fine-tuned to meet the requirements. A customized workspace was designed and manufactured to make the components more accessible. Different types of grippers were compared and the simplest and most efficient was then selected. Camera selection and calibration were done to get the RGB coordinates and the depth values which were finally converted into the robot's coordinate frame. The coordinates are then fed as the end goal position for the end effector to which the robot plans its motion and then executes. The paper also explains how the model responds to voice commands using the Google API to convert audio messages to text hence making it easier for the operator to issue commands to the robot. The merits and demerits of the implemented system were also noted.