Design of a home multi-robot system for the elderly and disabled

Abstract

Home-based assistive robotic care for the elderly and disabled has long been a goal of robotics researchers. Unfortunately, no single group has solved the problem of making robots that will perform a set of tasks sufficient enough to warrant the cost to the end consumer. Numerous advances and improvements in computing, communication and related robotic technologies have been paving the way towards cheaper, more capable robots. We propose a home robot system consisting of a set of heterogeneous robots with different task spaces, cloud computing to enhance the abilities of the system, integration with existing home infrastructure, and compatibility with mobile technology. A high level of integration with the open source software of the Robot Operating System (ROS) is proposed to accelerate the design process. For the exact types of robots, we propose to use an enhanced floor cleaning robot and a mobility and vision assistance robot in the form of an improved rollator walker.