DEVELOPMENT OF MULTI-MODAL CONTROL INTERFACES FOR A SEMI-AUTONOMOUS WHEELCHAIR

The purpose of the project is to assist users with different levels of disabilities to control a semi-autonomous wheelchair. A semi-autonomous wheelchair developed by RIVeR Lab is able to perform assistive control to avoid obstacles and cliffs and to follow walls. With a joystick control adapter, the basic joystick of the wheelchair can take commands directly from computers. In addition to joystick mechanical adapter control, human-machine interaction and control methods such as voice and electromyography (EMG) are deployed, with the aim of enabling people with different levels and types of disabilities to control the wheelchair. These non-physical motion based user control interfaces allow people with limited mobility to control the wheelchair with a desired accuracy

AdaptiX -- A Transitional XR Framework for Development and Evaluation of Shared Control Applications in Assistive Robotics

With the ongoing efforts to empower people with mobility impairments and the increase in technological acceptance by the general public, assistive technologies, such as collaborative robotic arms, are gaining popularity. Yet, their widespread success is limited by usability issues, specifically the disparity between user input and software control along the autonomy continuum. To address this, shared control concepts provide opportunities to combine the targeted increase of user autonomy with a certain level of computer assistance. This paper presents the free and open-source AdaptiX XR framework for developing and evaluating shared control applications in a high-resolution simulation environment. The initial framework consists of a simulated robotic arm with an example scenario in Virtual Reality (VR), multiple standard control interfaces, and a specialized recording/replay system. AdaptiX can easily be extended for specific research needs, allowing Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) researchers to rapidly design and test novel interaction methods, intervention strategies, and multi-modal feedback techniques, without requiring an actual physical robotic arm during the early phases of ideation, prototyping, and evaluation. Also, a Robot Operating System (ROS) integration enables the controlling of a real robotic arm in a PhysicalTwin approach without any simulation-reality gap. Here, we review the capabilities and limitations of AdaptiX in detail and present three bodies of research based on the framework. AdaptiX can be accessed at https://adaptix.robot-research.de.Comment: Accepted submission at The 16th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS'24

Semi-Autonomous Wheelchair Navigation With Statistical Context Prediction

This research introduces the structure and elements of the system used to predict the user\u27s interested location. The combination of DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise) algorithm and GMM (Gaussian Mixture Model) algorithm is used to find locations where the user usually visits. In addition, the testing result of applying other clustering algorithms such as Gaussian Mixture model, Density Based clustering algorithm and K-means clustering algorithm on actual data are also shown as comparison. With having the knowledge of locations where the user usually visits, Discrete Bayesian Network is generated from the user\u27s time-sequence location data. Combining the Bayesian Network, the user\u27s current location and the time when the user left the other locations, the user\u27s interested location can be predicted

Investigation on electric motor braking control system for electric powered wheelchair

In recent years, research on Electric Powered Wheelchair (EPW) has been widely studied due to its high importance of mobility for disabled people. During descent on a slope, the manual braking system is commonly used to control the speed by gripping the brake lever. However, the task becomes difficult if the user is an elderly or paralyzed due to their body’s deficiencies. As a result, the possibilities of collision and injuries to occur are high. In this study, the automatic electric motor braking control that is known as Hill Descent Control (HDC) is proposed to increase the safety of EPW during descending on slopes. Since the electric motor has an advantage which can generate the torque during braking, the plugging braking is integrated with the HDC system to control the speed of the EPW according to the desired speed from the user. The analysis of this study is divided into three phases; investigation of braking performance using electrical braking, development of active braking control system in the embedded system as well as the simulation environment and analysis on active braking control system in experimental and simulation work. From the experimental results, the plugging brake is most suitable to integrate with the active brake control system compared to the regenerative and dynamic brake. In the plugging brake, by changing the plugging voltage from 0.5 V to 4.5 V, a variety of dynamic behaviour effects such as braking distance, tire speed and slip ratio can be achieved. Meanwhile, from the analysis of active braking control system that was integrated with plugging braking, both of the experimental and simulation analysis results show the speed of EPW can be maintained at the desired speed o

Mobile Robots

The objective of this book is to cover advances of mobile robotics and related technologies applied for multi robot systems' design and development. Design of control system is a complex issue, requiring the application of information technologies to link the robots into a single network. Human robot interface becomes a demanding task, especially when we try to use sophisticated methods for brain signal processing. Generated electrophysiological signals can be used to command different devices, such as cars, wheelchair or even video games. A number of developments in navigation and path planning, including parallel programming, can be observed. Cooperative path planning, formation control of multi robotic agents, communication and distance measurement between agents are shown. Training of the mobile robot operators is very difficult task also because of several factors related to different task execution. The presented improvement is related to environment model generation based on autonomous mobile robot observations

Perception Framework for Activities of Daily Living Manipulation Tasks

There is an increasing concern in tackling the problems faced by the elderly community and physically in-locked people to lead an independent life experience problems with self- care. The need for developing service robots that can help people with mobility impairments is hence very essential. Developing a control framework for shared human-robot autonomy will allow locked-in individuals to perform the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) in a exible way. The relevant ADL scenarios were identi ed as handling objects, self-feeding, and opening doors for indoor nav- igation assistance. Multiple experiments were conducted, which demonstrates that the robot executes these daily living tasks reliably without requiring adjustment to the environment. The indoor manipulation tasks hold the challenge of dealing with a wide range of unknown objects. This thesis presents a framework developed for grasping without requiring a priori knowledge of the objects being manipulated. A successful manipulation task requires the combination of aspects such as envi- ronment modeling, object detection with pose estimation, grasp planning, motion planning followed by an e?cient grasp execution, which is validated by a 6+2 Degree of Freedom robotic manipulator

Biorefarmeries: Milking ethanol from algae for the mobility of tomorrow

The idea of this project is to fully exploit microalgae to the best of its potential, possibly proposing a sort of fourth generation fuel based on a continuous milking of macro- and microorganisms (as cows in a milk farm), which produce fuel by photosynthetic reactions. This project proposes a new transportation concept supported by a new socio-economic approach, in which biofuel production is based on biorefarmeries delivering fourth generation fuels which also have decarbonization capabilities, potential negative CO2 emissions plus positive impacts on mobility, the automotive Industry, health and environment and the econom

Intelligent Computing: The Latest Advances, Challenges and Future

Computing is a critical driving force in the development of human civilization. In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of intelligent computing, a new computing paradigm that is reshaping traditional computing and promoting digital revolution in the era of big data, artificial intelligence and internet-of-things with new computing theories, architectures, methods, systems, and applications. Intelligent computing has greatly broadened the scope of computing, extending it from traditional computing on data to increasingly diverse computing paradigms such as perceptual intelligence, cognitive intelligence, autonomous intelligence, and human-computer fusion intelligence. Intelligence and computing have undergone paths of different evolution and development for a long time but have become increasingly intertwined in recent years: intelligent computing is not only intelligence-oriented but also intelligence-driven. Such cross-fertilization has prompted the emergence and rapid advancement of intelligent computing. Intelligent computing is still in its infancy and an abundance of innovations in the theories, systems, and applications of intelligent computing are expected to occur soon. We present the first comprehensive survey of literature on intelligent computing, covering its theory fundamentals, the technological fusion of intelligence and computing, important applications, challenges, and future perspectives. We believe that this survey is highly timely and will provide a comprehensive reference and cast valuable insights into intelligent computing for academic and industrial researchers and practitioners