Functional evaluation of ASIBOT: A new approach on portable robotic system for disabled people

In this work, an innovative robotic solution for human care and assistance is presented. Our main objective is to develop a new concept of portable robot able to support the elderly and those people with different levels of disability during the execution of daily tasks, such as washing their face or hands, brushing their teeth, combing their hair, eating, drinking, and bringing objects closer, among others. Our prototype, ASIBOT, is a five degrees of freedom (DOF) self-contained manipulator that includes the control system and electronic equipment on board. The main advantages of the robot are its light weight, about 11 kg for a 1.3 m reach, its autonomy, and its ability to move between different points (docking stations) of the room or from the environment to a wheelchair and vice versa, which facilitates its supportive functions. The functional evaluation of ASIBOT is addressed in this paper. For this purpose the robotic arm is tested in different experiments with disabled people, gathering and discussing the results according to a methodology that allows us to assess users' satisfaction.The research leading to these results has received funding from the RoboCity2030- II-CM project (S2009/DPI-1559), funded by Programas de Actividades I+D en la Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds of the EU.Publicad

Personal Autonomy Rehabilitation in Home Environments by a Portable Assistive Robot

Increasingly disabled and elderly people with mobility problems want to live autonomously in their home environment. They are motivated to use robotic aids to perform tasks by themselves, avoiding permanent nurse or family assistant supervision. They must find means to rehabilitate their abilities to perform daily life activities (DLAs), such as eating, shaving, or drinking. These means may be provided by robotic aids that incorporate possibilities and methods to accomplish common tasks, aiding the user in recovery of partial or complete autonomy. Results are highly conditioned by the system's usability and potential. The developed portable assistive robot ASIBOT helps users perform most of these tasks in common living environments. Minimum adaptations are needed to provide the robot with mobility throughout the environment. The robot can autonomously climb from one surface to another, fixing itself to the best place to perform each task. When the robot is attached to its wheelchair, it can move along with it as a bundle. This paper presents the work performed with the ASIBOT in the area of rehabilitation robotics. First, a brief description of the ASIBOT system is given. A description of tests that have been performed with the robot and several impaired users is given. Insight into how these experiences have influenced our research efforts, especially, in home environments, is also included. A description of the test bed that has been developed to continue research on performing DLAs by the use of robotic aids, a kitchen environment, is given. Relevant conclusions are also included.This work has been supported by the CAM Project S2009/DPI-1559/ROBOCITY2030 I

A generic controller for teleoperation on robotic manipulators using low-cost devices

[Abstract] A usual form of human-robot interaction is the ability of the former to remotely command the latter through any sort of auxiliary device; this interaction is referred to with the term “teleoperation”. Robots are common examples of systems that can be controlled remotely. Depending on the task at hand, said systems can grow in complexity and costs. Specifically, the peripherals devoted to controlling the robot could require costly engineering and even an ad hoc design. However, a range of low-cost, commercial devices and controllers, originally intended for other purposes, can also be a good fit for teleoperation tasks in robotics. This work explores a selected collection of popular devices of this kind, and proposes a unified framework to exploit their capabilities as remote controllers for a set of robotic platforms. Their suitability is proven both on real and simulated versions of these platforms through simple experiments that show how they could be further used in more complex scenarios.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; PID2020-113508RB-I00Comunidad de Madrid; S2018/NMT-433

Acceptance of Assistive Technology by Users with Motor Disabilities Due to Spinal Cord or Acquired Brain Injuries: A Systematic Review

: Acquired motor limits can be provoked by neurological lesions. Independently of the aetiologies, the lesions require patients to develop new coping strategies and adapt to the changed motor functionalities. In all of these occasions, what is defined as an assistive technology (AT) may represent a promising solution. The present work is a systematic review of the scientific AT-related literature published in the PubMed, Cinahl, and Psychinfo databases up to September 2022. This review was undertaken to summarise how the acceptance of AT is assessed in people with motor deficits due to neurological lesions. We review papers that (1) dealt with adults (≥18 years old) with motor deficits due to spinal cord or acquired brain injuries and (2) concerned user acceptance of hard AT. A total of 615 studies emerged, and 18 articles were reviewed according to the criteria. The constructs used to assess users' acceptance mainly entail people's satisfaction, ease of use, safety and comfort. Moreover, the acceptance constructs varied as a function of participants' injury severity. Despite the heterogeneity, acceptability was mainly ascertained through pilot and usability studies in laboratory settings. Furthermore, ad-hoc questionnaires and qualitative methods were preferred to unstandardized protocols of measurement. This review highlights the way in which people living with acquired motor limits greatly appreciate ATs. On the other hand, methodological heterogeneity indicates that evaluation protocols should be systematized and finely tuned

Augmenting user capabilities through an adaptive assistive manipulator

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorAssistive robot manipulators have the potential to increase the independence of disabled persons in activities of daily living. The current designs are mainly limited to pure teleoperation by the user, given the need for keeping the user in the control loop, and the complexity of the tasks and environments in which they operate. This thesis aims to augment the user’s capabilities for performing such tasks by adapting the robot, and its level of assistance, to the user. Methodologies for modeling and benchmarking the complete human-robot system were established, which helped drive the development of different approaches to adaptation. This included a task-oriented optimization of the robot physical structure, approaches for low-level adaptive shared control, and work on interactive learning of, and assistance on completing, simple object manipulation tasks. Three experimental platforms were used: The ASIBOT manipulator of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), the AMOR manipulator of Exact Dynamics, and the iCub humanoid robot.Los manipuladores asistenciales tienen el potencial de incrementar la independencia de personas discapacitadas en sus actividades de la vida diaria. Los diseños actuales se limitan principalmente a una pura teleoperación, pues dada la complejidad de las tareas y del entorno, se necesita mantener al usuario en el lazo de control. Esta tesis pretende mejorar las capacidades del usuario para realizar estas tareas, adaptando el robot y su nivel de asistencia a las necesidades del usuario. Se han establecido metodologías para el modelado y evaluación del comportamiento del sistema formado por humano y robot, lo que ha permitido el desarrollo de diferentes aproximaciones a la adaptación. Esto incluye desde la optimización de la estructura del robot atendiendo a las tareas, la evaluación de diversas aproximaciones al control compartido adaptativo a bajo nivel, al aprendizaje interactivo y el desarrollo de asistencias para completar tareas sencillas de manipulación. Se ha hecho uso de tres plataformas experimentales: el manipulador ASIBOT de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), el manipulador AMOR de Exact Dynamics y el humanoide iCub.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y AutomáticaPresidente: Alberto Sanfeliú.- Secretario: Concepción Alicia Monje Micharet.- Vocal: Yiannis Demiri

Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Service Robots in Catering Applications: A Review and Future Challenges.

“Hello, I’m the TERMINATOR, and I’ll be your server today”. Diners might soon be feeling this greeting, with Optimus Prime in the kitchen and Wall-E then sending your order to C-3PO. In our daily lives, a version of that future is already showing up. Robotics companies are designing robots to handle tasks, including serving, interacting, collaborating, and helping. These service robots are intended to coexist with humans and engage in relationships that lead them to a better quality of life in our society. Their constant evolution and the arising of new challenges lead to an update of the existing systems. This update provides a generic vision of two questions: the advance of service robots, and more importantly, how these robots are applied in society (professional and personal) based on the market application. In this update, a new category is proposed: catering robotics. This proposal is based on the technological advances that generate new multidisciplinary application fields and challenges. Waiter robots is an example of the catering robotics. These robotic platforms might have social capacities to interact with the consumer and other robots, and at the same time, might have physical skills to perform complex tasks in professional environments such as restaurants. This paper explains the guidelines to develop a waiter robot, considering aspects such as architecture, interaction, planning, and executionpost-print13305 K

Geoffrey: An Automated Schedule System on a Social Robot for the Intellectually Challenged

The accelerated growth of the percentage of elder people and persons with brain injury-related conditions and who are intellectually challenged are some of the main concerns of the developed countries. These persons often require special cares and even almost permanent overseers that help them to carry out diary tasks. With this issue in mind, we propose an automated schedule system which is deployed on a social robot. The robot keeps track of the tasks that the patient has to fulfill in a diary basis. When a task is triggered, the robot guides the patient through its completion. The system is also able to detect if the steps are being properly carried out or not, issuing alerts in that case. To do so, an ensemble of deep learning techniques is used. The schedule is customizable by the carers and authorized relatives. Our system could enhance the quality of life of the patients and improve their self-autonomy. The experimentation, which was supervised by the ADACEA foundation, validates the achievement of these goalsThe accelerated growth of the percentage of elder people and persons with brain injury-related conditions and who are intellectually challenged are some of the main concerns of the developed countries. These persons often require special cares and even almost permanent overseers that help them to carry out diary tasks. With this issue in mind, we propose an automated schedule system which is deployed on a social robot. The robot keeps track of the tasks that the patient has to fulfill in a diary basis. When a task is triggered, the robot guides the patient through its completion. The system is also able to detect if the steps are being properly carried out or not, issuing alerts in that case. To do so, an ensemble of deep learning techniques is used. The schedule is customizable by the carers and authorized relatives. Our system could enhance the quality of life of the patients and improve their self-autonomy. The experimentation, which was supervised by the ADACEA foundation, validates the achievement of these goal

Robot imagination system

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorThis thesis presents the Robot Imagination System (RIS). This system provides a convenient mechanism for a robot to learn a user's descriptive vocabulary, and how it relates to the world for action. With RIS, a user can describe unfamiliar objects to a robot, and the robot will understand the description as long as it is a combination of words that have been previously used to describe other objects. One of the core uses of the RIS functionality is object recognition. Allowing requests with word combinations that have never been presented before together is well beyond the scope of many of the most relevant state of the art object recognition systems. RIS is not limited to object recognition. Through the use of evolutionary algorithms, the system endows the robot with the capability of generating a mental model (imagination) of a requested unfamiliar object. This capability allows the robot to work with this newly generated model within its simulations, or to expose the model to a user by projecting it on a screen or drawing the mental model as feedback so the user can provide a more detailed description if required. A new paradigm for robot action based on consequences on the environment has been integrated within the RIS architecture. Changes in the environment are continuously tracked, and actions are considered complete when the performed effects are closest to the desired effects, in a closed perception loop. Experimental validations have been performed in real environments using the humanoid robot Teo, bringing the Robot Imagination System closer to everyday household environments in the near future. ----------------------Esta tesis presenta el Sistema de Imaginación para Robots (RIS, por sus siglas en inglés). Este sistema proporciona un mecanismo conveniente para que un robot aprenda el vocabulario que un usuario utiliza para descripciones, y cómo esto se relaciona con el mundo. Con RIS, un usuario puede describir un objeto desconocido, y el robot entendería la descripción mientras ésta sea una combinación de palabras que hayan sido utilizadas previamente para describir otros objetos. Uno de los usos principales de la funcionalidad de RIS es el reconocimiento de objetos. Permitir consultas con combinaciones de palabras que nunca han sido presentadas juntas con anterioridad sobrepasa el alcance de una gran porción de los sistemas relevantes de reconocimiento de objetos del estado del arte. RIS no está limitado al reconocimiento de objetos. A través de algoritmos evolutivos, el sistema proporciona a un robot la capacidad de generar un modelo mental (imaginación) a partir de la consulta de un objeto desconocido. Esta capacidad permite que el robot trabaje con este modelo nuevamente generado en sus simulaciones, o exponer el modelo a un usuario proyectándolo en una pantalla o dibujando el modelo mental para cerrar un lazo donde el usuario puede proporcionar una descripción más detallada si esto se requiere. Un nuevo paradigma de la acción en robots, basado en las consecuencias en el entorno, ha sido introducido en la arquitectura RIS. Los cambios en el entorno se monitorizan continuamente, y las acciones se consideran completas cuando los efectos realizados maximizan su parecido a los efectos deseados, en un lazo cerrado de percepción. Se han realizado validaciones experimentales en entornos reales utilizando el robot humanoide Teo, acercando el Sistema de Imaginación para Robots a entornos domésticos cotidianos para un futuro cercano.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y AutomáticaPresidente: Thrishantha Nanayakkara.- Secretario: Luis Santiago Garrido Bullón.- Vocal: Vicente Matellán Oliver

PRELIMINARY DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF AN OVERHEAD KITCHEN ROBOT APPLIANCE

Many older adults and individuals with disabilities have difficulty with reaching, grasping, and carrying items that are a necessity to perform independent activities of daily living, including meal preparation in the kitchen. Assistive robotic manipulators are starting to show potential for independent assistance through their use on wheelchairs or mobile bases, but continue to lack many of the autonomous features readily available with fixed environment manipulators. The KitchenBot design described here provides the details and approach to providing an assistive robotic manipulator access to an entire kitchen workspace by utilizing a multi-degree track. Numerous focus groups were conducted in conjunction with the design and major features like heavy payload ability, tablet control interface, and user feedback was extracted. With further development, the KitchenBot could perform an even longer list of routine autonomous tasks in a product viable for everyone to use