High level functions for the intuitive use of an assistive robot

O. Lebec (1) , M.W. Ben Ghezala (1) , V. Leynart (2) , I. Laffont (3) , Charles Fattal (2) , L. Devilliers (4) , C. Chastagnol (4) , J.-C. Martin (4) , Y. Mezouar (5) , H. Korrapatti (5) , V. Dupourque (6) , C. Leroux (1)

1 DIASI (CEA, LIST) - Département Intelligence Ambiante et Systèmes Interactifs
2 APPROCHE - Association pour la promotion des nouvelles technologies en faveur des personnes en perte d'autonomie
3 CHU Montpellier
4 LIMSI - Laboratoire d'Informatique pour la Mécanique et les Sciences de l'Ingénieur
5 IP - Institut Pascal
6 Robosoft [Bidart]

This document presents the research project ARMEN (Assistive Robotics to Maintain Elderly People in a Natural environment), aimed at the development of a user friendly robot with advanced functions for assistance to elderly or disabled persons at home. Focus is given to the robot SAM (Smart Autonomous Majordomo) and its new features of navigation, manipulation, object recognition, and knowledge representation developed for the intuitive supervision of the robot. The results of the technical evaluations show the value and potential of these functions for practical applications. The paper also documents the details of the clinical evaluations carried out with elderly and disabled persons in a therapeutic setting to validate the project.

Keywords: very elderly; Aged; 80 and over; Disabled Persons; Equipment Design; Humans; User-Computer Interface; Validation Studies as Topic; Assistive robotics; Disabled people; Emotion understanding; Evaluation protocol; intuitive HMI; Mobile manipulation; Function evaluation; Knowledge representation; Object recognition; Robots; Handicapped persons; computer interface; devices; disabled person; human; procedures; rehabilitation; robotics; validation study

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]

O. Lebec, M.W. Ben Ghezala, V. Leynart, I. Laffont, Charles Fattal, et al.. High level functions for the intuitive use of an assistive robot. 2013 IEEE 13th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), Jun 2013, Seattle, WA, United States. ⟨10.1109/ICORR.2013.6650374⟩. ⟨cea-01840430⟩