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

Teaching humanoid robotics by means of human teleoperation through RGB-D sensors

This paper presents a graduate course project on humanoid robotics offered by the University of Padova. The target is to safely lift an object by teleoperating a small humanoid. Students have to map human limbs into robot joints, guarantee the robot stability during the motion, and teleoperate the robot to perform the correct movement. We introduce the following innovative aspects with respect to classical robotic classes: i) the use of humanoid robots as teaching tools; ii) the simplification of the stable locomotion problem by exploiting the potential of teleoperation; iii) the adoption of a Project-Based Learning constructivist approach as teaching methodology. The learning objectives of both course and project are introduced and compared with the students\u2019 background. Design and constraints students have to deal with are reported, together with the amount of time they and their instructors dedicated to solve tasks. A set of evaluation results are provided in order to validate the authors\u2019 purpose, including the students\u2019 personal feedback. A discussion about possible future improvements is reported, hoping to encourage further spread of educational robotics in schools at all levels

Information acquisition using eye-gaze tracking for person-following with mobile robots

In the effort of developing natural means for human-robot interaction (HRI), signifcant amount of research has been focusing on Person-Following (PF) for mobile robots. PF, which generally consists of detecting, recognizing and following people, is believed to be one of the required functionalities for most future robots that share their environments with their human companions. Research in this field is mostly directed towards fully automating this functionality, which makes the challenge even more tedious. Focusing on this challenge leads research to divert from other challenges that coexist in any PF system. A natural PF functionality consists of a number of tasks that are required to be implemented in the system. However, in more realistic life scenarios, not all the tasks required for PF need to be automated. Instead, some of these tasks can be operated by human operators and therefore require natural means of interaction and information acquisition. In order to highlight all the tasks that are believed to exist in any PF system, this paper introduces a novel taxonomy for PF. Also, in order to provide a natural means for HRI, TeleGaze is used for information acquisition in the implementation of the taxonomy. TeleGaze was previously developed by the authors as a means of natural HRI for teleoperation through eye-gaze tracking. Using TeleGaze in the aid of developing PF systems is believed to show the feasibility of achieving a realistic information acquisition in a natural way