Advances in Intelligent Mobility Assistance Robot Integrating Multimodal Sensory Processing

Abstract

Mobility disabilities are prevalent in our ageing society and impede activities important for the independent living of elderly people and their quality of life. The goal of this work is to support human mobility and thus enforce fitness and vitality by developing intelligent robotic platforms designed to provide usercentred and natural support for ambulating in indoor environments. We envision the design of cognitive mobile robotic systems that can monitor and understand specific forms of human activity, in order to deduce what the human needs are, in terms of mobility. The goal is to provide user and context adaptive active support and ambulation assistance to elderly users, and generally to individuals with specific forms of moderate to mild walking impairment.To achieve such targets, a reliable multimodal action recognition system needs to be developed, that can monitor, analyse and predict the user actions with a high level of accuracy and detail. Different modalities need to be combined into an integrated action recognition system. This paper reports current advances regarding the development and implementation of the first walking assistance robot prototype, which consists of a sensorized and actuated rollator platform. The main thrust of our approach is based on the enhancement of computer vision techniques with modalities that are broadly used in robotics, such as range images and haptic data, as well as on the integration of machine learning and pattern recognition approaches regarding specific verbal and non-verbal (gestural) commands in the envisaged (physical and non-physical) human-robot interaction context.

Neural Approximation Enhanced Predictive Tracking Control of a Novel Designed Four-Wheeled Rollator

“…Then, use the TRIZ tool to find a general solution corresponding to the TRIZ problem. Finally, the designer transforms the general solution into a design solution in the industry domain through an example analogy of industry domain knowledge [38,39]. The corresponding model of the product innovation process is based on the Kano-QFD-TRIZ combination is shown in Figure 1.…”

Accurate Human-Limb Segmentation in RGB-D Images for Intelligent Mobility Assistance Robots

“…Our data-acquisition setup consisted of a Kinect sensor mounted on top of a passive rollator, as in [21]. The recording process involved capturing RGB-D videos using the open-source Robotics Operating System (ROS) software capturing human subjects in a set of predefined use-cases and scenarios.…”

“…Recent studies indicate that 20% of people between the age of 70 − 85 years, and 50% of people above the age of 85 years report difficulties accomplishing basic activities of daily life [21]. Mobility impairment not only restricts independence severely, it is also detrimental to the self-esteem of the individuals and drastically limits their quality of life.…”

Motion Planning Algorithm of a Multi-Joint Snake-Like Robot Based on Improved Serpenoid Curve

“…The robot has high flexibility, super convenience and redundancy. The robot can not only accomplish important tasks such as earthquake relief, fire extinguishing and war investigation in engineering, but provide experimental platform for people to study artificial intelligence, control theory and mechanical analysis in experiments [1], [2]. Therefore, the research of a multi-joint snake-like robot has important engineering application value and strategic significance [3], [4].…”