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

Digital Systems Teaching and Research (DSTR) Robot: A Flexible Platform for Education and Applied Research

The DSTR (pronounced “Disaster”) robot has a strong history of being adaptable to different user’s needs, and there are many opportunities ahead that indicate that the sky, quite literally, is not the limit for this robust platform. This paper provides a historical perspective on the development of the DSTR robot as a collaborative design developed by the Mobile Integrated Solutions Laboratory (MISL) at Texas A&M University and ASEP 4X4 Inc. Texas Instruments has been a major partner in the integration of the control electronics, and Texas Space Technology Applications and Research (T STAR) LLC has played a significant role in the propagation of the DSTR robot as an adaptable applied research/education/STEM outreach platform. The paper will present examples of the strong industry-academic relationships that allow the DSTR robot to be utilized in a multitude of experiential learning environments. In addition to a number of STEM outreach activities, the DSTR robots are being used in the Introduction to Engineering course at Blinn College and in the Freshman Engineering curriculum at Texas A&M University. DSTRs have also been selected by NASA scientists as a low-cost lunar sample collector. The paper will also discuss the newly developed DSTR-E (DSTR Engineering) unit which requires students to perform several engineering tasks during the build process. The paper will also include the lessons learned from initial design through its transfer to the private sector for commercialization and future plans.Cockrell School of Engineerin

A Low-Cost Tele-Presence Wheelchair System

This paper presents the architecture and implementation of a tele-presence wheelchair system based on tele-presence robot, intelligent wheelchair, and touch screen technologies. The tele-presence wheelchair system consists of a commercial electric wheelchair, an add-on tele-presence interaction module, and a touchable live video image based user interface (called TIUI). The tele-presence interaction module is used to provide video-chatting for an elderly or disabled person with the family members or caregivers, and also captures the live video of an environment for tele-operation and semi-autonomous navigation. The user interface developed in our lab allows an operator to access the system anywhere and directly touch the live video image of the wheelchair to push it as if he/she did it in the presence. This paper also discusses the evaluation of the user experience

Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review

Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain, and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint. Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication management as well as policy for animal welfare

Teleoperated visual inspection and surveillance with unmanned ground and aerial vehicles,” Int

Abstract—This paper introduces our robotic system named UGAV (Unmanned Ground-Air Vehicle) consisting of two semi-autonomous robot platforms, an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The paper focuses on three topics of the inspection with the combined UGV and UAV: (A) teleoperated control by means of cell or smart phones with a new concept of automatic configuration of the smart phone based on a RKI-XML description of the vehicles control capabilities, (B) the camera and vision system with the focus to real time feature extraction e.g. for the tracking of the UAV and (C) the architecture and hardware of the UAV