8,308 research outputs found
Healthcare Robotics
Robots have the potential to be a game changer in healthcare: improving
health and well-being, filling care gaps, supporting care givers, and aiding
health care workers. However, before robots are able to be widely deployed, it
is crucial that both the research and industrial communities work together to
establish a strong evidence-base for healthcare robotics, and surmount likely
adoption barriers. This article presents a broad contextualization of robots in
healthcare by identifying key stakeholders, care settings, and tasks; reviewing
recent advances in healthcare robotics; and outlining major challenges and
opportunities to their adoption.Comment: 8 pages, Communications of the ACM, 201
Comparative performance of human and mobile robotic assistants in collaborative fetch-and-deliver tasks
There is an emerging desire across manufacturing industries to deploy robots that support people in their manual work, rather than replace human workers. This paper explores one such opportunity, which is to field a mobile robotic assistant that travels between part carts and the automotive final assembly line, delivering tools and materials to the human workers. We compare the performance of a mobile robotic assistant to that of a human assistant to gain a better understanding of the factors that impact its effectiveness. Statistically significant differences emerge based on type of assistant, human or robot. Interaction times and idle times are statistically significantly higher for the robotic assistant than the human assistant. We report additional differences in participant's subjective response regarding team fluency, situational awareness, comfort and safety. Finally, we discuss how results from the experiment inform the design of a more effective assistant.BMW Grou
An Evaluation Schema for the Ethical Use of Autonomous Robotic Systems in Security Applications
We propose a multi-step evaluation schema designed to help procurement agencies and others to examine the ethical dimensions of autonomous systems to be applied in the security sector, including autonomous weapons systems
Robots learn to behave: improving human-robot collaboration in flexible manufacturing applications
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
Safe Robotic Grasping: Minimum Impact-Force Grasp Selection
This paper addresses the problem of selecting from a choice of possible
grasps, so that impact forces will be minimised if a collision occurs while the
robot is moving the grasped object along a post-grasp trajectory. Such
considerations are important for safety in human-robot interaction, where even
a certified "human-safe" (e.g. compliant) arm may become hazardous once it
grasps and begins moving an object, which may have significant mass, sharp
edges or other dangers. Additionally, minimising collision forces is critical
to preserving the longevity of robots which operate in uncertain and hazardous
environments, e.g. robots deployed for nuclear decommissioning, where removing
a damaged robot from a contaminated zone for repairs may be extremely difficult
and costly. Also, unwanted collisions between a robot and critical
infrastructure (e.g. pipework) in such high-consequence environments can be
disastrous. In this paper, we investigate how the safety of the post-grasp
motion can be considered during the pre-grasp approach phase, so that the
selected grasp is optimal in terms applying minimum impact forces if a
collision occurs during a desired post-grasp manipulation. We build on the
methods of augmented robot-object dynamics models and "effective mass" and
propose a method for combining these concepts with modern grasp and trajectory
planners, to enable the robot to achieve a grasp which maximises the safety of
the post-grasp trajectory, by minimising potential collision forces. We
demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through several experiments with
both simulated and real robots.Comment: To be appeared in IEEE/RAS IROS 201
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