Robots For Humanity Project Making Strides

 Robots

Researchers at Georgia Tech, Oregon State, Willow Garage and dedicated users is leading to better robot surrogacy for people with extreme disabilities.  This work is helping develop not only real-world lifestyle improvements for handicapped people, but has the ancillary feature of leading to better navigation and human-computer interfaces between people and robotics generally.

As a result of a brainstem stroke, Henry Evans is mute and quadriplegic. Following extensive therapy, he regained the ability to move his head and use a finger, enabling him to use a computer. When Evans saw a television interview with Georgia Tech Professor Charlie Kemp showing research with the Willow Garage PR2, he immediately saw the opportunity for people with severe motor impairments to use mobile manipulators as assistive devices.

The project Robots for Humanity, a collaboration between Willow Garage, Georgia Tech, Oregon State and Henry and Jane Evans, first began in October 2010.  Evans is motivated by the possibility of using a robot as a surrogate for his paralyzed body, and he believes thousands of others with severe motor impairments could benefit as well.

The technical details of this work are pending publication, but some of the highlights of the Robots for Humanity initiative are as follows:
In October 2011, Evans gave Halloween candy to children through the PR2 robot at a local mall. As a child would approach the robot and hold out his or her candy bag, Evans would command the robot to pick up a candy from the side table and then place it inside the child’s bag.

In Evans' home, he has demonstrated navigating the robot through his home to find and deliver to himself objects such as a towel from a drawer in the kitchen, and small food items from inside the fridge.

One of the very first accomplishments was to manipulate the PR2 to scratch his own nose--the first time he had been able to do so in over a decade. Since then, Evans has not only used the PR2 to shave himself, but also tele-operated a PR2 located at Georgia Tech and shaved Prof. Kemp remotely.



The Robots for Humanity team at Willow Garage is led by Matei Ciocarlie and Kaijen Hsiao. Their approach is to research and develop a diverse suite of open source software tools that blend the capabilities of the user and the robot. This has resulted in what is the first example of a mobile manipulation platform operated by a motor impaired person using only a head-tracker single-button mouse as an input device, and used for varied and unscripted manipulation tasks in a real home as well as limited forms of social interaction.

The goal of putting robots into real homes to help people with disabilities is a long-term vision for the project. By actively involving the users, Henry and Jane Evans, in their participatory design process, Willow Garage has made tangible progress towards assistive capabilities that are both useful and usable. They also anticipate that by putting robots into the real homes of people with disabilities early and often, they can better direct research to overcome the real-world obstacles to the use of mobile manipulators as an effective assistive technology.

Concurrent work on robot surrogates is under way for the European flagship project, Robot Companion for Citizens.






SOURCE  Willow Garage

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