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Opportunities and Challenges in Mixed-Reality for an Inclusive Human-Robot Collaboration Environment
(2018)
This paper presents an approach to enhance robot control using Mixed-Reality. It highlights the opportunities and challenges in the interaction design to achieve a Human-Robot Collaborative environment. In fact, Human-Robot Collaboration is the perfect space for social inclusion. It enables people, who suffer severe physical impairments, to interact with the environment by providing them movement control of an external robotic arm. Now, when discussing about robot control it is important to reduce the visual-split that different input and output modalities carry. Therefore, Mixed-Reality is of particular interest when trying to ease communication between humans and robotic systems.
This Article introduces two research projects towards assistive robotic arms for people with severe body impairments. Both projects aim to develop new control and interaction designs to promote accessibility and a better performance for people with functional losses in all four extremities, e.g. due to quadriplegic or multiple sclerosis. The project MobILe concentrates on using a robotic arm as drinking aid and controlling it with smart glasses, eye-tracking and augmented reality. A user oriented development process with participatory methods were pursued which brought new knowledge about the life and care situation of the future target group and the requirements a robotic drinking aid needs to meet. As a consequence the new project DoF-Adaptiv follows an even more participatory approach, including the future target group, their family and professional caregivers from the beginning into decision making and development processes within the project. DoF-Adaptiv aims to simplify the control modalities of assistive robotic arms to enhance the usability of the robotic arm for activities of daily living. lo decide on exemplary activities, like eating or open a door, the future target group, their family and professional caregivers are included in the decision making process. Furthermore all relevant stakeholders will be included in the investigation of ethical, legal and social implications as well as the identification of potential risks. This article will show the importance of the participatory design for the development and research process in MobILe and DoF-Adaptiv.
Recommendations for the Development of a Robotic Drinking and Eating Aid - An Ethnographic Study
(2021)
Being able to live independently and self-determined in one’s own home is a crucial factor or human dignity and preservation of self-worth. For people with severe physical impairments who cannot use their limbs for every day tasks, living in their own home is only possible with assistance from others. The inability to move arms and hands makes it hard to take care of oneself, e.g. drinking and eating independently. In this paper, we investigate how 15 participants with disabilities consume food and drinks. We report on interviews, participatory observations, and analyzed the aids they currently use. Based on our findings, we derive a set of recommendations that supports researchers and practitioners in designing future robotic drinking and eating aids for people with disabilities.
A Robust Interface for Head Motion based Control of a Robot Arm using MARG and Visual Sensors
(2018)
Head-controlled human machine interfaces have gained popularity over the past years, especially in the restoration of the autonomy of severely disabled people, like tetraplegics. These interfaces need to be reliable and robust regarding the environmental conditions to guarantee safety of the user and enable a direct interaction between a human and a machine. This paper presents a hybrid MARG and visual sensor system for head orientation estimation which is in this case used to teleoperate a robotic arm. The system contains a Magnetic Angular Rate Gravity (MARG)-sensor and a Tobii eye tracker 4C. A MARG sensor consists of tri-axis accelerometer, gyroscope as well as a magnetometer which enable a complete measurement of orientation relative to the direction of gravity and magnetic field of the earth. The tri-axis magnetometer is sensitive to external magnetic fields which result in incorrect orientation estimation from the sensor fusion process. In this work the Tobii eye tracker 4C is used to increase head orientation estimation because it also features head tracking even though it is commonly used for eye tracking. This type of visual sensor does not suffer magnetic drift. However, it computes orientation data only, if a user is detectable. Within this work a state machine is presented which enables data fusion of the MARG and visual sensor to improve orientation estimation. The fusion of the orientation data of MARG and visual sensors enables a robust interface, which is immune against external magnetic fields. Therefore, it increases the safety of the human machine interaction.