In-home and remote use of robotic body surrogates by people with profound motor deficits

Abstract

By controlling robots comparable to the human body, people with profound motor deficits could potentially perform a variety of physical tasks for themselves, improving their quality of life. The extent to which this is achievable has been unclear due to the lack of suitable interfaces by which to control robotic body surrogates and a dearth of studies involving substantial numbers of people with profound motor deficits. We developed a novel, web-based augmented reality interface that enables people with profound motor deficits to remotely control a PR2 mobile manipulator from Willow Garage, which is a human-scale, wheeled robot with two arms. We then conducted two studies to investigate the use of robotic body surrogates. In the first study, 15 novice users with profound motor deficits from across the United States controlled a PR2 in Atlanta, GA to perform a modified Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) and a simulated self-care task. Participants achieved clinically meaningful improvements on the ARAT and 12 of 15 participants (80%) successfully completed the simulated self-care task. Participants agreed that the robotic system was easy to use, was useful, and would provide a meaningful improvement in their lives. In the second study, one expert user with profound motor deficits had free use of a PR2 in his home for seven days. He performed a variety of self-care and household tasks, and also used the robot in novel ways. Taking both studies together, our results suggest that people with profound motor deficits can improve their quality of life using robotic body surrogates, and that they can gain benefit with only low-level robot autonomy and without invasive interfaces. However, methods to reduce the rate of errors and increase operational speed merit further investigation.

A system for bedside assistance that integrates a robotic bed and a mobile manipulator

“…Some work has focused on methods for general-purpose mobile manipulators to assist with specific assistive tasks [24, 25]. A few tasks that have been investigated are household cleaning [26], generic in-home mobile manipulation [27, 28], shaving [29], feeding [30], picking-and-placing tasks [31], and transfers [32]. Some groups have looked at mobile manipulators providing assistance to users in bed.…”

“…Our bedside-assistance system incorporates a number of components described in previous publications [3, 6, 28]. [3] presents the method for selecting robot configurations for a task, but only presents results from computer simulations and did not compare performance with and without collaboration between a robotic bed and a mobile manipulator.…”

“…[3] presents the method for selecting robot configurations for a task, but only presents results from computer simulations and did not compare performance with and without collaboration between a robotic bed and a mobile manipulator. Neither [28] nor [6] considers coordination between a robotic bed and a mobile manipulator. [28] presents the basic teleoperation interface for the PR2 robot, but incorporates only low-level autonomy.…”

Active robot-assisted feeding with a general-purpose mobile manipulator: Design, evaluation, and lessons learned

“…Alternatively, researchers have applied general-purpose mobile manipulators to a variety of applications, such as rescue, assistance, and residential service [4,5]. The robots often have a mobile base and human-like arms (e.g., PR2 robot from Willow Garage [6] and Jaco arm with a mobile base from Fattal et al [7]), and help people to overcome their physical or perceptual limitations via teleoperation [8]. Although mobile manipulators have the potential to provide a wide variety of assistive services [9], their complexity creates challenges, including the risk of low usability.…”

“…The system has software and hardware interfaces to allow caregivers to replace the utensil and bowl depending on the type of food. The system also allows users to access its interface from a web browser, enabling the use of a variety of devices and increasing accessibility [8]. To improve safety, we designed the system to use compliant arm motions with a low-gain controller as well as a multimodal execution monitor to detect and react to anomalous events during assistance [15,16].…”