MobiKa - Low-Cost Mobile Robot for Human-Robot Interaction

One way to allow elderly people to stay longer in their homes is to use of service robots to support them with everyday tasks. With this goal, we design, develop and evaluate a low-cost mobile robot to communicate with elderly people. The main idea is to create an affordable communication assistant robot which is optimized for multimodal Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Our robot can navigate autonomously through dynamic environments using a new algorithm to calculate poses for approaching persons. The robot was tested in a real life scenario in an elderly care home

Facial expressions and personality: A kinematical investigation during an emotion induction experiment

Background/Aims: In order to elucidate the relationship between personality traits and expression of positive emotions in healthy volunteers, standardized personality inventories and kinematical analysis of facial expressions can be helpful and were applied in the present study. Methods: Markers fixed at distinct points of the face emitting ultrasonic signals at high frequency gave a direct measure of facial movements with high spatial-temporal resolution. Forty-six healthy participants (mean age: 40.7 years; 20 males, 26 females) watching a witty movie ('Mr. Bean') were investigated. Results: Speed of `laughing' was associated with higher scores on Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale and NEO-FFI (Openness to Experience). Conclusion: Kinematical analysis of facial expressions seems to reflect sensation seeking and related personality styles. Higher speed of facial movements in sensation seekers suggests lowered serotonergic function. Copyright (c) 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel

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

An Adaptive Guidance System for Robotic Walking Aids

In the last years, several robotic walking aids to assist elderly users with mobility constraints and thus to react to the growing number of elderly persons in our society have been developed. In order to ensure good support for the user, the robotic walker should adapt to the motion of the user while at the same time not losing the target out of sight. Even though some of the existing active robotic walkers are able to guide their user to a target, during guidance, the input of the user is not considered sufficiently. Therefore a new adaptive guidance system for robotic walkers has been developed. It is able to lead the walking aid user to a given target while considering his inputs during guidance and adapting the path respectively. The guidance system has been implemented on the mobile robot assistant Care-O-bot II and a field test was done in an old people’s residence proving the correct function and usefulness of the guidance system

Improved X-ray detection and particle identification with avalanche photodiodes

Avalanche photodiodes are commonly used as detectors for low energy x-rays. In this work we report on a fitting technique used to account for different detector responses resulting from photo absorption in the various APD layers. The use of this technique results in an improvement of the energy resolution at 8.2 keV by up to a factor of 2, and corrects the timing information by up to 25 ns to account for space dependent electron drift time. In addition, this waveform analysis is used for particle identification, e.g. to distinguish between x-rays and MeV electrons in our experiment.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Application of numerical simulation for lightweight design / Marcel Graf ... [et al.]

Due to the increasing lightweight construction efforts to reduce component weight and thus minimize the energy demand for mobilisation of moving masses, light metals or even plastic applications are growing in importance. In order to realise the process development with consideration of the material, its behaviour must be known. This paper aims to show the importance of numerical process design and how it can be validated with experiments. For the thermo-mechanical simulation to generate results with high accuracy, the use of real material data is necessary. Depending on the investigated process, different characterisation possibilities are available. Here, the compression test was carried out, for example, to determine the forming behaviour of aluminium (EN AW-6060) and magnesium alloys (AZ31) and for a polyamide without and with glass fibre reinforced (PA 6 and PA6-GF30) on elevated temperatures and strain rates of hot bulk forming processes. In this case, the sample position, especially in the case of the polyamide, received increased attention. Thus, it was found that glass fibre reinforced plastics (PA-GF30) can be compressed differently in the longitudinal direction than perpendicular to the extrusion direction. Furthermore, an enhancement of the forming limit and a reduction of the forming force with increasing temperature could be observed for all investigated materials. In addition to the forming behaviour, the thermo-dynamic material properties are at least just as important for the purposed thermo-mechanical process simulations. These were also determined by experimental simulation for the analysed materials in order to regard the internal microstructure. Then, the implementation of all these material data into the FE software simufact.forming V15 and MSC Marc/Mentat was carried out in order to predict a forging process as well as an additive manufacturing process for the semi-finished products. Finally, the calibration of the FE models took place to verify their accuracy. This is the first study undertaken to characterise the forming behaviour of plastics and to study the production of layered magnesium components for further forming processes

Digital Shadows for Operational Technology Monitoring - A Comparison of Data-Driven Approaches

Critical infrastructures in domains like road traffic management heavily depend on Operational Technology (OT) to ensure safe operation. One faces, however, also tremendous challenges in OT monitoring (OTM), i.e., ensuring the proper functioning of the OT objects themselves, due to their inherent large-scale, heterogeneous, and evolutionary nature. Going beyond the current practice of monitoring single OT object states, the digital twin paradigm could enable a more holistic OTM - research being, however, still in its infancy. Thus, the contribution of this paper is threefold: Firstly, we discuss key challenges from a domain perspective and derive appropriate criteria for a systematic evaluation of data-driven approaches aiming at a digital representation of an OT infrastructure. Secondly, based on these criteria, we identify and discuss promising generic approaches as well as domain-specific ones, ranging from IT networks to Social Networks. Thirdly, based thereupon, we present lessons learned and open issues for further research