Assistive Mobile Robot Research Articles

Socially assistive robotics for post-stroke rehabilitation

BackgroundAlthough there is a great deal of success in rehabilitative robotics applied to patient recovery post stroke, most of the research to date has dealt with providing physical assistance. However, new rehabilitation studies support the theory that not all therapy need be hands-on. We describe a new area, called socially assistive robotics, that focuses on non-contact patient/user assistance. We demonstrate the approach with an implemented and tested post-stroke recovery robot and discuss its potential for effectiveness.ResultsWe describe a pilot study involving an autonomous assistive mobile robot that aids stroke patient rehabilitation by providing monitoring, encouragement, and reminders. The robot navigates autonomously, monitors the patient's arm activity, and helps the patient remember to follow a rehabilitation program. We also show preliminary results from a follow-up study that focused on the role of robot physical embodiment in a rehabilitation context.ConclusionWe outline and discuss future experimental designs and factors toward the development of effective socially assistive post-stroke rehabilitation robots.

재난 인명 탐색을 위한 로봇 시스템 개발

This paper introduces a mobile robotic system being developed for urban search and rescue. In order to search human victims in narrow spaces, we developed two types of serially linked mobile robots, named KAEROT-Centipede and KAEROT-SnakeTV1, that can climb over large vertical steps or travel inside narrow vertical pipes. To send such mobile robots to the disaster areas coping with large obstacles, we also developed a assistant mobile robot, named KAEROT-QuadTrack, that has 4 articulated track modules. This paper describes the mechanical structure and control architecture of the serially linked mobile robots and the supporting configuration for torque reduction of the assistant mobile robot during spinning motion that usually requires large driving torque. The experimental results show that such robotic systems have good mobility over the various terrains in disaster areas.

2P1-D10 Gesture Recognition for the User Interface of Assistive Mobile Robot System

We have been developing Assistive MObile Robot System (AMOS), which helps a daily life of physically handicapped persons. The aim of AMOS is to replace only simple tasks that to transport daily use objects in the indoor environment semi autonomously. If the operator chooses the object to be transported in the environment, then AMOS approaches to the objects, pick up it, and finally relocate it in the designed location. To allow the user to operate AMOS easily, we have been developing vision based user interface which accepts the gesture of the operator as a command. As a first step, only simple gesture clipping is implemented and evaluated.

Development of Mobility-Assistance Robot for Health Maintenance and Mobility of Elderly

Development of Mobility-Assistance Robot for Health Maintenance and Mobility of Elderly

Development of the assistive mobile robot system: AMOS—to aid in the daily life of the physically handicapped

It can be exhausting, both physically and emotionally, to assist physically handicapped persons. Therefore, an assistive mobile system called AMOS (Assistive MObile robot System) has been developed to help alleviate this burden. The purpose of AMOS is to pick up and transport daily use objects, placing them in a designated indoor location semi-autonomously. AMOS consists of a self-contained mobile robot body, a user interface with a touch-panel and a computer network (Ethernet LAN, Internet). The user interacts with the mobile robot through a Web browser connected to a computer network, allowing for communication anytime, from anywhere and by anyone. This mode provides a simple way for communicating with and determining the status of the robot. Experiments were performed to verify the successful operation of AMOS. Although the system performed as designed, it would prove useful to the extend service area of the robot through communication mechanisms and the user interface.

Towards robotic assistants in nursing homes: Challenges and results

This paper describes a mobile robotic assistant, developed to assist elderly individuals with mild cognitive and physical impairments, as well as support nurses in their daily activities. We present three software modules relevant to ensure successful human–robot interaction: an automated reminder system; a people tracking and detection system; and finally a high-level robot controller that performs planning under uncertainty by incorporating knowledge from low-level modules, and selecting appropriate courses of actions. During the course of experiments conducted in an assisted living facility, the robot successfully demonstrated that it could autonomously provide reminders and guidance for elderly residents.

Design Issues of a Semi-Autonomous Robotic Assistant for the Health Care Environment

This paper discusses design issues of a mobile robotic assistant for health or home care applications with the objective of relieving hospital personnel or domestic users of time-consuming routine tasks. These tasks are delegated to the robot via natural language and in turn autonomously executed. With respect to the execution of typical fetch-and-carry tasks, key components are surveyed and a system architecture for integration of the individual hardware and software modules into a service robot is presented. A prototype implementation is described and used for demonstrating the performance of the proposed design approach in real-world service scenarios.