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

Cognitive assisted living ambient system: a survey

The demographic change towards an aging population is creating a significant impact and introducing drastic challenges to our society. We therefore need to find ways to assist older people to stay independently and prevent social isolation of these population. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide various solutions to help older adults to improve their quality of life, stay healthier, and live independently for a time. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is a field to investigate innovative technologies to provide assistance as well as healthcare and rehabilitation to impaired seniors. The paper provides a review of research background and technologies of AAL

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

Combining motion planning with social reward sources for collaborative human-robot navigation task design

Across the human history, teamwork is one of the main pillars sustaining civilizations and technology development. In consequence, as the world embraces omatization, human-robot collaboration arises naturally as a cornerstone. This applies to a huge spectrum of tasks, most of them involving navigation. As a result, tackling pure collaborative navigation tasks can be a good first foothold for roboticists in this enterprise. In this thesis, we define a useful framework for knowledge representation in human-robot collaborative navigation tasks and propose a first solution to the human-robot collaborative search task. After validating the model, two derived projects tackling its main weakness are introduced: the compilation of a human search dataset and the implementation of a multi-agent planner for human-robot navigatio

In-home and remote use of robotic body surrogates by people with profound motor deficits

By controlling robots comparable to the human body, people with profound motor deficits could potentially perform a variety of physical tasks for themselves, improving their quality of life. The extent to which this is achievable has been unclear due to the lack of suitable interfaces by which to control robotic body surrogates and a dearth of studies involving substantial numbers of people with profound motor deficits. We developed a novel, web-based augmented reality interface that enables people with profound motor deficits to remotely control a PR2 mobile manipulator from Willow Garage, which is a human-scale, wheeled robot with two arms. We then conducted two studies to investigate the use of robotic body surrogates. In the first study, 15 novice users with profound motor deficits from across the United States controlled a PR2 in Atlanta, GA to perform a modified Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) and a simulated self-care task. Participants achieved clinically meaningful improvements on the ARAT and 12 of 15 participants (80%) successfully completed the simulated self-care task. Participants agreed that the robotic system was easy to use, was useful, and would provide a meaningful improvement in their lives. In the second study, one expert user with profound motor deficits had free use of a PR2 in his home for seven days. He performed a variety of self-care and household tasks, and also used the robot in novel ways. Taking both studies together, our results suggest that people with profound motor deficits can improve their quality of life using robotic body surrogates, and that they can gain benefit with only low-level robot autonomy and without invasive interfaces. However, methods to reduce the rate of errors and increase operational speed merit further investigation.Comment: 43 Pages, 13 Figure

A review on humanoid robotics in healthcare

Humanoid robots have evolved over the years and today it is in many different areas of applications, from homecare to social care and healthcare robotics. This paper deals with a brief overview of the current and potential applications of humanoid robotics in healthcare settings. We present a comprehensive contextualization of humanoid robots in healthcare by identifying and characterizing active research activities on humanoid robot that can work interactively and effectively with humans so as to fill some identified gaps in current healthcare deficiency

Intelligent Robotic Perception Systems

Robotic perception is related to many applications in robotics where sensory data and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) techniques are involved. Examples of such applications are object detection, environment representation, scene understanding, human/pedestrian detection, activity recognition, semantic place classification, object modeling, among others. Robotic perception, in the scope of this chapter, encompasses the ML algorithms and techniques that empower robots to learn from sensory data and, based on learned models, to react and take decisions accordingly. The recent developments in machine learning, namely deep-learning approaches, are evident and, consequently, robotic perception systems are evolving in a way that new applications and tasks are becoming a reality. Recent advances in human-robot interaction, complex robotic tasks, intelligent reasoning, and decision-making are, at some extent, the results of the notorious evolution and success of ML algorithms. This chapter will cover recent and emerging topics and use-cases related to intelligent perception systems in robotics

Design and Validation of Control Interfaces for Anna

This project improves the control mechanisms for a semi-autonomous wheelchair with an assistive robotic arm system. The wheelchair is aimed at increasing the self-sufficiency of individuals with LIS. The objectives include the validation of the existing control interfaces, as well as the integration and design of new systems. The wireless brain-computer headset, used to implement the control system for navigation, is validated through several user studies. An EMG sensor system serves as an alternative control module. To increase physical interaction with the environment, a robotic arm system is integrated. The system includes a RGB-D camera for object detection, enabling autonomous object retrieval. The project outcomes include a demonstration performing navigation and manipulation tasks