A Software Suite for the Control and the Monitoring of Adaptive Robotic Ecologies

Adaptive robotic ecologies are networks of heterogeneous robotic devices (sensors, actuators, automated appliances) pervasively embedded in everyday environments, where they learn to cooperate towards the achievement of complex tasks. While their flexibility makes them an increasingly popular way to improve a system’s reliability, scalability, robustness and autonomy, their effective realisation demands integrated control and software solutions for the specification, integration and management of their highly heterogeneous and computational constrained components. In this extended abstract we briefly illustrate the characteristic requirements dictated by robotic ecologies, discuss our experience in developing adaptive robotic ecologies, and provide an overview of the specific solutions developed as part of the EU FP7 RUBICON Project

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Ono: an open platform for social robotics

In recent times, the focal point of research in robotics has shifted from industrial ro- bots toward robots that interact with humans in an intuitive and safe manner. This evolution has resulted in the subfield of social robotics, which pertains to robots that function in a human environment and that can communicate with humans in an int- uitive way, e.g. with facial expressions. Social robots have the potential to impact many different aspects of our lives, but one particularly promising application is the use of robots in therapy, such as the treatment of children with autism. Unfortunately, many of the existing social robots are neither suited for practical use in therapy nor for large scale studies, mainly because they are expensive, one-of-a-kind robots that are hard to modify to suit a specific need. We created Ono, a social robotics platform, to tackle these issues. Ono is composed entirely from off-the-shelf components and cheap materials, and can be built at a local FabLab at the fraction of the cost of other robots. Ono is also entirely open source and the modular design further encourages modification and reuse of parts of the platform

Enabling Social Interaction Through Embodiment in ExCITE

No abstract availableThe emerging demographic trends toward an aging population involve an unflagging research of ways of assisting elderly people to stay independent for as long as possible. This means to be active at home and in the labour market, to prevent social isolation and promote societal inclusion. Both ICT and robotics technologies can contribute to help achieving these goals. This paper introduces the aims of the Ambient Assisted Living project ExCITE whose main objective is to enhance a robotic platform for telepresence with features enabling social interaction from a domestic environment to the outside world. The whole ExCITE project uses a user-centered approach hence it evolves around an intensive evaluation to be performed in situ, on a PanEuropean scale. An existing prototype, called Giraff, is to be deployed to targeted end-users, and refined taking into account outcome of the evaluation. This paper introduces the objectives of ExCITE and offers a description of its initial activities particularly focused on the user evaluation

A Sensing Platform to Monitor Sleep Efficiency

Sleep plays a fundamental role in the human life. Sleep research is mainly focused on the understanding of the sleep patterns, stages and duration. An accurate sleep monitoring can detect early signs of sleep deprivation and insomnia consequentially implementing mechanisms for preventing and overcoming these problems. Recently, sleep monitoring has been achieved using wearable technologies, able to analyse also the body movements, but old people can encounter some difficulties in using and maintaining these devices. In this paper, we propose an unobtrusive sensing platform able to analyze body movements, infer sleep duration and awakenings occurred along the night, and evaluating the sleep efficiency index. To prove the feasibility of the suggested method we did a pilot trial in which several healthy users have been involved. The sensors were installed within the bed and, on each day, each user was administered with the Groningen Sleep Quality Scale questionnaire to evaluate the user’s perceived sleep quality. Finally, we show potential correlation between a perceived evaluation with an objective index as the sleep efficiency.</p

Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197