A novel framework inspired by human behavior for peg-in-hole assembly

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to enhance the performance of robots in peg-in-hole assembly tasks, enabling them to swiftly and robustly accomplish the task. It also focuses on the robot’s ability to generalize across assemblies with different hole sizes. Design/methodology/approach Human behavior in peg-in-hole assembly serves as inspiration, where individuals visually locate the hole firstly and then continuously adjust the peg pose based on force/torque feedback during the insertion process. This paper proposes a novel framework that integrate visual servo and adjustment based on force/torque feedback, the authors use deep neural network (DNN) and image processing techniques to determine the pose of hole, then an incremental learning approach based on a broad learning system (BLS) is used to simulate human learning ability, the number of adjustments required for insertion process is continuously reduced. Findings The author conducted experiments on visual servo, adjustment based on force/torque feedback, and the proposed framework. Visual servo inferred the pixel position and orientation of the target hole in only about 0.12 s, and the robot achieved peg insertion with 1–3 adjustments based on force/torque feedback. The success rate for peg-in-hole assembly using the proposed framework was 100%. These results proved the effectiveness of the proposed framework. Originality/value This paper proposes a framework for peg-in-hole assembly that combines visual servo and adjustment based on force/torque feedback. The assembly tasks are accomplished using DNN, image processing and BLS. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no similar methods were found in other people’s work. Therefore, the authors believe that this work is original.