Method and Apparatus for Controlling a Robotic Device via Wearable Sensors

A human machine interface system for training a robotic device by a human operator, the system comprising:

• a robot controller for controlling movement of a robotic device;
• a wearable sensing device including at least one six-degree of freedom accelerometer that senses position and orientation of the wearable sensing device, a movement of the wearable sensing device being used to control a movement of the robotic device via the robotic controller;
• a service provider device in communication with the wearable sensing device for receiving position and orientation data from the wearable sensing device, the service provider device including a gesture recognition device and a position and orientation processing device, the gesture recognition device identifying gestures generated by the wearable sensors, the position and orientation processing device estimating position, orientation, and velocity of the wearable sensors;
• a service requester device including a control signal generator and a control state machine, the control signal generator integrating data received from the gesture recognition and from the position and orientation processing device for generating control signals and providing the control signals to the robotic device, the control state sub-module identifying transitions states that include null states, static states, and motion states;
• wherein the robotic device is trained to perform a respective operation by the identifying a sequence of gestures, orientations, positions, and velocities as sensed by the wearable sensing device, wherein the sequence of gestures, orientations, positions, and velocities are converted to predefined actions and executed via the robot controller.