UET students build the first Telerobotic System that uses VR for learning

Pakistani students from the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore have created an advanced Telerobotics system that could expand the use of robotics technology in local industries. The students build the system as part of their final year project.

The system uses robotic operators which helps the system to plan and reconfigure the path of robots in case of assembly changes. Robots can make your daily repetitive tasks easier, but bringing changes in the system is a great hassle. To modify patterns in the system is a difficult task and requires specialist assistance. It is a three-member team which comprises of UETians Armughan Sarwar, Abdullah Humayun, and Muhammad Waseem.

The technology created by these students takes help from virtual reality techniques to train the robotic manipulators, which is a much easier method as compared to the traditional one. The system comprises of three parts which are, a robotic manipulator, a machine vision system, a virtual reality headset, and a processing unit.

Ahsan Naeem, the project supervisor said, “The objective is to interact with the robot in a virtual environment through a handheld controller. The movement of the handheld controller is captured through motion capture system. The real physical robot will follow the same path as of the virtual robot.”

The VR bot works in a way that it copies the movements of the virtual bot in real time. The technology is programmed in such a way that anyone can make the robot follow a specified path and perform given tasks. The students claim that the system is Pakistan’s first and is aimed to promote automation adoption in small and medium-size industries.