Human-centred design methods : developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright ElsevierThis article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children’s development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human–robot interactions.Peer reviewe

Data-Driven Grasp Synthesis - A Survey

We review the work on data-driven grasp synthesis and the methodologies for sampling and ranking candidate grasps. We divide the approaches into three groups based on whether they synthesize grasps for known, familiar or unknown objects. This structure allows us to identify common object representations and perceptual processes that facilitate the employed data-driven grasp synthesis technique. In the case of known objects, we concentrate on the approaches that are based on object recognition and pose estimation. In the case of familiar objects, the techniques use some form of a similarity matching to a set of previously encountered objects. Finally for the approaches dealing with unknown objects, the core part is the extraction of specific features that are indicative of good grasps. Our survey provides an overview of the different methodologies and discusses open problems in the area of robot grasping. We also draw a parallel to the classical approaches that rely on analytic formulations.Comment: 20 pages, 30 Figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Robotic

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

Robots that look like humans : a brief look into humanoid robotics

This article provides a brief overview of the technology of humanoid robots. First, historical development and hardware progress are presented mainly on human-size full-body biped humanoid robots, together with progress in pattern generation of biped locomotion. Then, «whole-body motion» ? coordinating leg and arm movements to fully leverage humanoids? high degrees of freedom ? is presented, followed by its applications in fields such as device evaluation and large-scale assembly. Upper-body humanoids with a mobile base, which are mainly utilized for research on human-robot interaction and cognitive robotics, are also introduced before addressing current issues and perspectives

Multi-contact planning and control for humanoid robots: Design and validation of a complete framework

In this paper, we consider the problem of generating appropriate motions for a torque- controlled humanoid robot that is assigned a multi-contact loco-manipulation task, i.e., a task that requires the robot to move within the environment by repeatedly establishing and breaking multiple, non-coplanar contacts. To this end, we present a complete multi-contact planning and control framework for multi-limbed robotic systems, such as humanoids. The planning layer works offline and consists of two sequential modules: first, a stance planner computes a sequence of feasible contact combinations; then, a whole-body planner finds the sequence of collision-free humanoid motions that realize them while respecting the physical limitations of the robot. For the challenging problem posed by the first stage, we propose a novel randomized approach that does not require the specification of pre-designed potential contacts or any kind of pre-computation. The control layer produces online torque commands that enable the humanoid to execute the planned motions while guaranteeing closed-loop balance. It relies on two modules, i.e., the stance switching and reactive balancing module; their combined action allows it to withstand possible execution inaccuracies, external disturbances, and modeling uncertainties. Numerical and experimental results obtained on COMAN+, a torque-controlled humanoid robot designed at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, validate our framework for loco-manipulation tasks of different complexity

In-home and remote use of robotic body surrogates by people with profound motor deficits

By controlling robots comparable to the human body, people with profound motor deficits could potentially perform a variety of physical tasks for themselves, improving their quality of life. The extent to which this is achievable has been unclear due to the lack of suitable interfaces by which to control robotic body surrogates and a dearth of studies involving substantial numbers of people with profound motor deficits. We developed a novel, web-based augmented reality interface that enables people with profound motor deficits to remotely control a PR2 mobile manipulator from Willow Garage, which is a human-scale, wheeled robot with two arms. We then conducted two studies to investigate the use of robotic body surrogates. In the first study, 15 novice users with profound motor deficits from across the United States controlled a PR2 in Atlanta, GA to perform a modified Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) and a simulated self-care task. Participants achieved clinically meaningful improvements on the ARAT and 12 of 15 participants (80%) successfully completed the simulated self-care task. Participants agreed that the robotic system was easy to use, was useful, and would provide a meaningful improvement in their lives. In the second study, one expert user with profound motor deficits had free use of a PR2 in his home for seven days. He performed a variety of self-care and household tasks, and also used the robot in novel ways. Taking both studies together, our results suggest that people with profound motor deficits can improve their quality of life using robotic body surrogates, and that they can gain benefit with only low-level robot autonomy and without invasive interfaces. However, methods to reduce the rate of errors and increase operational speed merit further investigation.Comment: 43 Pages, 13 Figure