Development of service robot for fetching objects in home environment

Abstract

Regarding to global problem of ageing, mobile manipulator type of home service robot MARY (mobile assistant robot for you) has been developed in the Department of Bioengineering and Robotics, Tohoku University. The usual problems that elderly people encounter in their lives in home environment are studied. Decreased mobility is found to be among the first reasons for moving to care institutions from home. One reason for moving around at home is need to carry objects. Considering this, fetching of objects from table-tops or shelves in home environment is one of the key functionalities for a mobile manipulator type of home robot. In this work functionality of the MARY robot is enhanced. The fetching task is implemented using multimodal user interface (Ul) with touch and voice inputs designed for elderly people. Intelligent adaptive manipulation strategy simplifies the usage of the system, based on image processing of images from on-board cameras. System functionality is evaluated with tests of the subsystems.