Shen Tao, Afsar Md Rayhan, Zhang He, Ye Cang, Shen Xiangrong
College of Aeronautics and Engineering, Kent State University.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Alabama.
J Intell Robot Syst. 2020 Dec;100(3-4):911-923. doi: 10.1007/s10846-020-01258-1. Epub 2020 Sep 21.
With the rapid aging of the U.S. population, the mobility impairment is becoming a more and more challenging issue that affects a large number of individuals. The research presented in this paper aims at helping the mobility-challenged individuals with a novel robotic companion, which is a walker-type mobile robot capable of accompanying the human user and keeping user at the center for protection and possible power assistance. The robotic companion is equipped with a 3D computer vision system, which provides a unique capability of sensing the human-robot relative position/orientation without physical contact or the need for wearable sensors. As such, the robotic companion enables the user to walk freely with minimum disturbance to his/her normal gait, relieving the user from the physical and cognitive loads associated with the use of traditional assistive devices. For the development of the robotic companion, the authors designed and fabricated a low-cost, differentially steered mobile robotic platform, and also developed a unique image processing system to extract the position/orientation information from the 3D camera-captured images. Furthermore, an advanced motion control system was developed for the robotic companion, which provides novel solutions to the unique challenges such as sway reduction and noise reduction in digital differentiation. To quantify the performance, component and system-level experimentation was conducted, and the results demonstrated that robotic companion and its key components function as desired and the system is expected to reduce the user load and improve the user mobility in real-world scenarios.
随着美国人口的迅速老龄化，行动障碍正成为一个越来越具有挑战性的问题，影响着大量人群。本文所展示的研究旨在借助一种新型机器人伴侣来帮助行动不便的个体，该机器人伴侣是一种步行式移动机器人，能够陪伴人类用户并让用户处于中心位置以提供保护和可能的动力辅助。该机器人伴侣配备了一个3D计算机视觉系统，它具备一种独特能力，即无需物理接触或使用可穿戴传感器就能感知人机相对位置/方向。因此，该机器人伴侣能让用户以对其正常步态干扰最小的方式自由行走，将用户从与使用传统辅助设备相关的身体和认知负担中解脱出来。为了开发这种机器人伴侣，作者设计并制造了一个低成本、差速转向的移动机器人平台，还开发了一种独特的图像处理系统，用于从3D相机拍摄的图像中提取位置/方向信息。此外，还为该机器人伴侣开发了一个先进的运动控制系统，它为诸如数字微分中的摆动减少和噪声降低等独特挑战提供了新颖的解决方案。为了量化性能，进行了组件级和系统级实验，结果表明机器人伴侣及其关键组件按预期运行，并且该系统有望在实际场景中减轻用户负担并提高用户的行动能力。
