Abstract
The SMOOTH-robot is a mobile robot that—due to its modularity—combines a relatively low price with the possibility to be used for a large variety of tasks in a wide range of domains. In this article, we demonstrate the potential of the SMOOTH-robot through three use cases, two of which were performed in elderly care homes. The robot is designed so that it can either make itself ready or be quickly changed by staff to perform different tasks. We carefully considered important design parameters such as the appearance, intended and unintended interactions with users, and the technical complexity, in order to achieve high acceptability and a sufficient degree of utilization of the robot. Three demonstrated use cases indicate that such a robot could contribute to an improved work environment, having the potential to free resources of care staff which could be allocated to actual care-giving tasks. Moreover, the SMOOTH-robot can be used in many other domains, as we will also exemplify in this article.
Highlights
We introduce a novel service robot at a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) (HORIZON 2020, 2014) of 5–6
Despite many research projects on human–robot interaction and significant progress in disciplines such as navigation, computer vision, speech processing, and dialogue design, mobile service robots that deeply interact with humans have not reached the market yet (Bodenhagen et al, 2019)
We describe some of the progress that has been made in different disciplines utilized on the SMOOTH-robot
Summary
We introduce a novel service robot at a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) (HORIZON 2020, 2014) of 5–6 (see Figure 1A). The SMOOTH-project 3 aimed to design an assistive social robot that engages in (at least some basic) interaction with humans, which leads to convincing business cases for end-users such that commercialization becomes feasible. Wide range of applicability: The SMOOTH-robot is supposed to autonomously solve frequently occurring tasks that are usually conducted by care-givers or other staff. This implies that the robot needs to be able to transport, load, and offload items.
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