Design of Cloud Robotic Services for Senior Citizens to Improve Independent Living and Personal Health Management

A cloud robotics solution was designed and initially tested with a mobile robotic platform and a smart environment, in order to provide health-care management services to senior citizens and improve their independent living. The solution was evaluated in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) and tested in the realistic scenario of the DomoCasa Living Lab, Peccioli, Italy. In particular, a medication reminding service, a remote home monitoring and a user indoor localization algorithm were outsourced in the cloud and provided to the robots, users and carers. The system acquired data from a smart environment and addressed the robot to the user for service delivery. Experiments showed a service's Reliability of Response at least of the 0.04 % and a Time of Response of the same order of magnitude of the processing time required by the user localization algorithm

Framework for context analysis and planning of an assistive robot

This paper presents the developments with the SAM robot, established in the ARMEN project. We are interested in cognitive robotics. We have developed two complementary modules. The first one deals with the representation of knowledge, while the second develops the scenario generation. Indeed, the representation of knowledge tells us about the scene, the current state of the robot and the strategy to be adopted by the robot to achieve goals specified by an assisted person. The information extracted from the knowledge representation is the starting point to generate the action plan and the implementation of the scenario by the robot

A Flexible and Robust Large Scale Capacitive Tactile System for Robots

IEEE Sensor Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 10, 2013Capacitive technology allows building sensors that are small, compact and have high sensitivity. For this reason it has been widely adopted in robotics. In a previous work we presented a compliant skin system based on capacitive technology consisting of triangular modules interconnected to form a system of sensors that can be deployed on non-flat surfaces. This solution has been successfully adopted to cover various humanoid robots. The main limitation of this and all the approaches based on capacitive technology is that they require to embed a deformable dielectric layer (usually made using an elastomer) covered by a conductive layer. This complicates the production process considerably, introduces hysteresis and limits the durability of the sensors due to ageing and mechanical stress. In this paper we describe a novel solution in which the dielectric is made using a thin layer of 3D fabric which is glued to conductive and protective layers using techniques adopted in the clothing industry. As such, the sensor is easier to produce and has better mechanical properties. Furthermore, the sensor proposed in this paper embeds transducers for thermal compensation of the pressure measurements. We report experimental analysis that demonstrates that the sensor has good properties in terms of sensitivity and resolution. Remarkably we show that the sensor has very low hysteresis and effectively allows compensating drifts due to temperature variations

A Comparison of Braking Strategies for Elastic Joint Robots

It has recently been shown that intrinsically elastic robots are capable of outperforming rigid robots in terms of peak velocity by making systematic use of energy storage and release. Certainly, high link side velocities are beneficial for performance, however, they also increase the probability of self damage or human injury in case of a collision. To ensure the physical integrity of both human and robot, it is therefore crucial to avoid potentially dangerous collisions and react in a compliant manner if unwanted contact has occurred or may occur unforeseeable. In this paper, we consider the most intuitive collision anticipation and pre-reaction scheme, namely stopping an elastic robot, if possible in minimum time. For 1-DOF elastic joints with limited elastic deflection we extend existing model-based and model-free controllers and compare their performance. Furthermore, we analyze the braking trajectory that is achieved with the different strategies. The 1-DOF solution is extended to the double pendulum case, where we show that feasible estimates for maximum and final position can be obtained at the very first instant of braking

Study on Control Methodology of Compliant Manipulation Utilizing Additional Contact with Environment

制度:新 ; 報告番号:甲3297号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2011/2/25 ; 早大学位記番号:新560

User-centered design of a dynamic-autonomy remote interaction concept for manipulation-capable robots to assist elderly people in the home

In this article, we describe the development of a human-robot interaction concept for service robots to assist elderly people in the home with physical tasks. Our approach is based on the insight that robots are not yet able to handle all tasks autonomously with sufficient reliability in the complex and heterogeneous environments of private homes. We therefore employ remote human operators to assist on tasks a robot cannot handle completely autonomously. Our development methodology was user-centric and iterative, with six user studies carried out at various stages involving a total of 241 participants. The concept is under implementation on the Care-O-bot 3 robotic platform. The main contributions of this article are (1) the results of a survey in form of a ranking of the demands of elderly people and informal caregivers for a range of 25 robot services, (2) the results of an ethnography investigating the suitability of emergency teleassistance and telemedical centers for incorporating robotic teleassistance, and (3) a user-validated human-robot interaction concept with three user roles and corresponding three user interfaces designed as a solution to the problem of engineering reliable service robots for home environments

NONLINEAR MOTION CONTROL OF HUMANOID ROBOT UPPER-BODY FOR MANIPULATION TASK

This paper presents nonlinear control algorithm for motion control of humanoid robot upper-body. Upper-body consists of two arms, each having seven degrees of freedom (DOFs), and multi-segment lumbar spine with six DOFs which enables motion of the trunk, increases the workspace of robot arms and contributes to anthropomorphic appearance of the robot movements. Manipulation task, where robot is supposed to move an object of unknown mass, in presence of parameter uncertainties and external disturbance has been considered. Weight of the object has been considered as an external disturbance. Nonlinearity of  the  robot dynamical model and coupling between robot segments have been taken into account during control design. Sliding mode control with disturbance estimator has been used in order to provide accurate trajectory  tracking in presence of disturbances. Efficiency of the proposed control algorithm is verified through a numerical simulation and results are presented