3 Toward a Human-Friendly User Interface to Control an Assistive Robot in the Context of Smart Homes

Abstract

The design of robot dedicated to person with disabilities necessitatesusers implication in all steps of product development: design solution,prototyping the system, choice of users interfaces, and testing it withusers in real conditions. However, before any design of any system, itis necessary to understand and meet the needs of the disabled users. Inthis chapter, we describe our research activity on the integration of arobotic arm in the environment of disabled people who have lost theabilities to use their proper arms to perform daily living tasks and whoare able to use an adapted robot to compensate, even partly, theproblems of manipulation in their environments. To develop a humanfriendly interface it is necessary to act on the system itself to makeit more flexible and easy to use. Improvement of assistive robot'sfunctionalities must comply with users environment which is composed ofseveral assistive aids complementary to the robot. To meet this targetwe should have a consistent knowledge on users' needs and taking intoaccount their specific types of disability, their restrictedpossibilities, and also their acceptation level of technologies. Thisrequires multidisciplinary competencies on several research areas, suchas computer sciences, networking, robotics, home automation, and also onergonomic to provide standardized functionalities which allow efficientusability of assistive technological aids.This chapter describes the adaptation software architecture developedfor an assistive robotic arm, called Manus manipulator, in the contextof smart homes where the robot is considered as an object among theothers.