Evaluating the use of robots to enlarge AAL services1

Abstract

Abstract-We introduce robots as a tools to enhance Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) services. Robots are a unique opportunity to create new systems to cooperate in reaching better living conditions. Robots offer the possibility of richer interaction with humans, and can perform actions to actively change the environment. The current state-of-art includes skills in various areas, including advanced interaction (natural language, visual attention, object recognition, intention learning), navigation (map learning, obstacle avoidance), manipulation (grasping, use of tools), and cognitive architectures to handle highly unpredictable environments. From our experience in several robotics projects and principally in the RoboCup@Home competition, a new set of evaluation methods is proposed to assess the maturity of the required skills. Such comparison should ideally enable the abstraction from the particular robotic platform and concentrate on the easy comparison of skills. The validity of that lowlevel skills can be then scaled to more complex tasks, that are composed by several skills. Our conclusion is that effective evaluation methods can be designed with the objective of enabling robots to enlarge AAL services.

Dawning of the Age of Robots in Hospitality and Tourism: Challenges for Teaching and Research

“…Today, robotic applications abound in manufacturing, inside and outside the home, medicine, entertainment, the military and law enforcement and various other applications (Thrun, 2004;Vaussard et al, 2014). Toy manufacturer Lego has built robot-like features into many of its products, and robot competitions-for instance navigating a restaurant or delivering food orders-are emerging (Angulo, Pfeiffer, Tellez, & Alenyà, 2015;Touretzky, 2010). Within the extant economy, robots are now routine in military and law enforcement applications (Calderone, 2013;Swinson, 1997) and health care delivery (Ackerman, 2014;Blackman, 2013;Kavic, 2004;Oborn, Barrett, & Darzi, 2011).…”

“…Robotic floor cleaners are approaching a mature product category (Sung, Grinter, Christensen, & Guo, 2008;Touretzky, 2010;Vaussard et al, 2014) and assisted ambient living services-e.g. home-care and smart homes-keep improving (Angulo et al, 2015). Pondering his creation, the father of robotics Joseph Engelberger stated, "I can't define a robot, but I know one when I see one (Beer, Fisk, & Rogers, 2012, p.…”

“…Educators could encourage students to follow and perhaps participate in robot competitions (Touretzky, 2010). Two competitions for example, RoboCup@Home and RoCKIn@Home, focus on developing personal service robots for domestic applications such as serving at a cocktail party or navigating a restaurant (Angulo et al, 2015). These robots could have enhanced networking and cognitive abilities to perform socially useful tasks such as cleaning rooms, room/table service and interact with guests.…”

R-Tourism: Applications and Incorporation of Robotics and Service Automation in Tourism and Hospitality

“…Surfacing in hospitality and tourism, Japan has a robot hotel [8] and robotic information agents [9]. Robotic floor cleaners [10]- [12] and assisted ambient living services-i.e., home-care and smart homes-keep improving [13]. Furthermore, toy manufacturer Lego has robot features in many of its products, and robot competitions-i.e., navigating a restaurant or delivering food orders-are emerging [11], [13].…”

Towards robots reasoning about group behavior of museum visitors: Leader detection and group tracking

“…This strong interest is driven by a wide spectrum of promising applications in many areas such as content-based image storage and retrieval, video conferencing, smart surveillance [13], perceptual interfaces, virtual reality and robotics [1], just to name a few.…”