Trajectory Planning of a Quadrotor to Monitor Dependent People

Abstract

This article introduces a framework for assisting dependent people at home through a vision-based autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Such an aircraft equipped with onboard cameras can be useful for monitoring and recognizing a dependent's activity. This work is focused on the problem of planning the flight path of a quadrotor to perform monitoring tasks. The objective is to design a trajectory planning algorithm that allows the UAV to position itself for the sake of capturing images of the dependent person's face. These images will be later treated by a base station to evaluate the persons emotional state, together with his/her behavior, this way determining the assistance needed in each situation. Numerical simulations have been carried out to validate the proposed algorithms. The results show the effectiveness of the trajectory planner to generate smooth references to our previously designed GPI (generalized proportional integral) controller. This demonstrates that a quadrotor is able to perform monitoring flights with a high motion precision.

Artificial intelligence within the interplay between natural and artificial computation: Advances in data science, trends and applications

“…9). Considering the health care applications tackled, the application field faced (i) elder people with PD, exploring new paradigms of interaction [76], (ii) patients with deficits in facial affect recognition, designing therapies based on human avatars [77], (iii) people with disabilities in general, identifying the brain areas involved in processing emotions [78], (iv) people with visual and intellectual disabilities, reporting the effectiveness of using a game or a conversation on achieving a higher self-disclosure [79], (v) dependent people living at home, using a flying robot the monitor facial emotions [80] and a wearable to detect stress [81], and, (vi) people performing physical rehabilitation exercises, monitored from two carts equipped with an RGB-D camera each on a motorized circular rail [82].…”

“…Another work benefited the field of HRI by facing a broadened understanding of brain emotional encoding in order to improve the capabilities of robots to fully engage with the user's emotional reactions [84]. Another article introduced a framework for assisting dependent people at home through an autonomous unmanned flying robot that captures images of the dependent person's face [80]. The outcomes of another paper will help to improve HRI for promoting selfdisclosure as the first step in a research project that aims to alleviate worrying behavior in the user group [79].…”

Feeling of Safety and Comfort towards a Socially Assistive Unmanned Aerial Vehicle That Monitors People in a Virtual Home

“…It should be mentioned that: (i) this UAV simulator is part of a VR platform developed by our research group, whose operation is explained in Section 4 ; (ii) the dynamics of the quadrotor and the generalised proportional integral (GPI) controller, which can be consulted in a previous work [ 32 ]. Regarding the trajectory planner, the initial versions [ 16 , 33 ] were designed for a circular monitoring path at a constant height defined by the person’s head. However, to carry out the study of the influence of the above-mentioned parameters in the safety and comfort of the monitored user, it has been necessary to implement a new trajectory planner algorithm which will be detailed next.…”

Feeling of Safety and Comfort Towards a Socially Assistive Unmanned Aerial Vehicle That Monitors People in a Virtual Home

“…At this respect, it should be mentioned that: (i) this UAV Simulator is part of a virtual reality platform developed by our research group, whose operation will be explained in Section 4; (ii) the dynamics of the quadrotor and the generalised proportional integral (GPI) controller can be consulted in a previous work [22]. Regarding the trajectory planner, the initial versions [16,23] were designed for a circular monitoring path at a constant height defined by the person's head. However, to carry out the study of the influence of the above-mentioned parameters in the safety and comfort of the monitored user, it has been necessary to implement a new trajectory planner algorithm which will be detailed next.…”