Comparison of position repeatability of a human operator and an industrial manipulating robot

Robot performance criteria of position repeatability are studied. Weight-to-payload ratio is in manipulating robots significantly higher than in human operators. Bracing strategy improving the robot performances is introduced in the paper. The strategy copies human behavior during fine motion operations. A comparison is made between the robot and the human operator performing approximately the same manipulating task. Contactless measurements of position repeatability were accomplished with the OPTOTRAK motion analysis system. The results of tests demonstrate considerable improvement of robot and human operator's position repeatability when using bracing.