Proprio and teleoperation of a robotic system for disabled persons' assistance in domestic environments

Abstract

The chapter describes a teleoperation system for assisting disabled and elderly people in their lives and work environments. The developed system ASIBOT (assistive robot) is part of the EU 5th FP project MATS (IST 2001-32080). The goal of the project is to come up with a new concept in teleoperated robotics systems that would help people in their daily domestic activities such as eating, drinking, shaving, grooming or simply retrieving objects from shelves or from the floor, etc. The best feature of the ASIBOT system is represented by a snake-like robot arm that is capable of moving around serially from a wall-mounted or table- mounted docking stations. The robot is also able to "jump" to or from a wheelchair. One of the important properties of proprio and teleoperation of assistive robots is the fact that the operator could be at the same time the patient, the user or the target of the task. Due to disability, the operator has limited capability on controlling the master and also considerable delays in closing the teleoperation loop. Depending on the level of the operators disability, different types of HMI are needed to be used. Some HMI are commanded by voice, simple switches or a joystick. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.