Projection Mapping, Projected AR

Projection mapping, or project AR, in robotics is an augmented reality (AR) or extended reality (XR) method that directly projects a robot’s intent onto its physical operating environment (e.g., highlighting an object to grasp or navigation path to follow on the floor).

Compared to virtual reality (VR), it frees humans from wearing extra headsets, making observation of projections scalable beyond a single person (i.e., to a crowd).

Other benefits include improved visibility (e.g., no need to be close to a monitor to see), drastic decrease in mental inference of robot intent (unlike the vague pointing behaviors through arm movement or eye gaze), and no error-prone mapping from the media itself to the operating environment.

As opposed to the non-verbal methods and verbal explanations found among humans, projection mapping is a method that allows for direct and accurate externalization. This projection completely removes the need for mental inference as the perceived objects or the objects to be manipulated are directly externalized. The directness is similar to the use of a display screen, but projection is more salient because bystanders or robot coworkers can also see the projection from farther away, instead of requiring people to stop their work in order to walk to a monitor to examine the robot’s states. Direct projection onto the operating environment also eliminates mental mapping from another media such as a monitor, which can cause misjudgment and lead to undesired consequences.