Poznań University of Technology, Chair of Control, Robotics, and Computer Science

Major projects and activities in Biomedical Robotics

Project Name and Acronym

Home service robot system

Duration

 

Web site

 

Sponsoring promoter

 

Funding programme

 

Keywords

Multi robot system, comunication, human-friendly interface

Co-ordinating group

 

Partners (group name, category*)

Laboratoire Systems Complexes Centre d’Etudes Mecaniques d’Ile de France Universite d’Evry-Val d’Essone 40 Rue du Pelvoux, 91020 Evry cedex, France

Objectives

 To develop a home robotic assistant for disabled and elderly people

Relevant activities

We want use Human-friendly Man-Machine Interface for control of two or three mobile robots.  The elderly of the disabled has serious problems in doing a certain work with their own effort so that some service robots system  (mobile robot system) will be very helpful if it can do the work instead of the human.  The robot system will be highly interactive to user and uses the user-friendly interface such as gesture, voice, movement and context. The representative man-machine interfaces for the elderly or the disabled in service robots system are vision based system, voice-based system.

In the chosen application field, it is important to take into account the communication between the person and the multi robot system in both the psychological and the scientific aspects. In a first step, only the scientific aspect is foreseen, the psychological aspect will only slightly appear in several characteristics of the Generalised person to machine interface (GPMI). For its building, three points of view have been detected: user, installer/fitter, and researcher.

In the user point of view, one has to consider the following constraints:

-        a friendly robot identification,

-        a tool allowing the choice of a pre-fitted mission,

-        with inherent parameters,

-        with parameters given by the person,

-        an interface for entering the mission,

-        based on a drawing tool,

-        base on menus,

-        a module giving to the person, under some verification, a direct control of the group of the robots. This direct intervention in the mission can be originated from the person but also be requested by an inability of the robots to perform the mission in certain spatio-temporal situations.

-        An explanation module.

In the installer/fitter point of view, one has to consider the following constraints:

-        drawing the flat,

-        giving to the robot the competencies associated with their hardware and software equipment,

-        establishing the robot number,

-        testing the system according the pre-fitted missions,

-        installing the user’s guide.

From a researcher point of view, one has to consider all the constraints listed above to which are added those giving access to the simulator functions.

Our will to improve the GPMI versatility lead us to choose a PC for the GPMI hardware architecture and, for the software architecture, a multi-agent system. Among the agents are an internet Client/Server used in the communication between the GPMI and the robots, a fast Client/server used in the analysis of the user requests and the building of a mission.

Achieved biomedical robotic prototypes/ products

 

User/clinical trials

objectives

 

robotic systems

 

methodologies

 

involved users (number and category)

 

main results

 

clinical partners

 

other relevant information

 

Summary of products, systems, prototypes

Name

Short description°

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summary of current partners (technological, clinical, user)

Group name

Category*

Contacts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Available laboratories/equipment

Electronic laboratory

AutoCAD2000, the PC card with signal processor (DSP)

Mechanical laboratory

AutoCAD2000, Mechanical Desktop 4,

Software laboratory

Linux, Corba, Visual C++

Robotic equipment

The experimental set-up with DSP cards, Two robots STÄUBLI RX60, The industrial robot Irp6,  The Team of mobile robots for Robot Soccer

Other

Vision System (CCD camera, the frame grabber Matrox Corona)

Related publications

§     _D.Dobroczyński, P.Dutkiewicz, T. Jedwabny, K. Kozlowski, J. Majchrzak, G. Niwczyk, Mobile Robot Soccer ,Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Methods and Models in Automation and Robotics, Międzyzdroje 2000, Poland, Vol. 2, pp. 599-605

 



* Among: technological developers, technological researchers, clinical researcher, service providers, users

° Please insert photographs, if available