Department of Electronics and Telecommunications (DET), Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy.
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (DIMEAS), Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jul 14;22(14):5261. doi: 10.3390/s22145261.
Population aging and pandemics have been shown to cause the isolation of elderly people in their houses, generating the need for a reliable assistive figure. Robotic assistants are the new frontier of innovation for domestic welfare, and elderly monitoring is one of the services a robot can handle for collective well-being. Despite these emerging needs, in the actual landscape of robotic assistants, there are no platforms that successfully combine reliable mobility in cluttered domestic spaces with lightweight and offline Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for perception and interaction. In this work, we present Marvin, a novel assistive robotic platform we developed with a modular layer-based architecture, merging a flexible mechanical design with cutting-edge AI for perception and vocal control. We focus the design of Marvin on three target service functions: monitoring of elderly and reduced-mobility subjects, remote presence and connectivity, and night assistance. Compared to previous works, we propose a tiny omnidirectional platform, which enables agile mobility and effective obstacle avoidance. Moreover, we design a controllable positioning device, which easily allows the user to access the interface for connectivity and extends the visual range of the camera sensor. Nonetheless, we delicately consider the privacy issues arising from private data collection on cloud services, a critical aspect of commercial AI-based assistants. To this end, we demonstrate how lightweight deep learning solutions for visual perception and vocal command can be adopted, completely running offline on the embedded hardware of the robot.
人口老龄化和大流行病已经表明，这会导致老年人被隔离在家里，因此需要一个可靠的辅助人员。机器人助手是家庭福利领域创新的新前沿，而老年人监测是机器人可以为集体福祉处理的服务之一。尽管存在这些新兴需求，但在实际的机器人助手领域中，没有任何平台能够成功地将可靠的移动能力与用于感知和交互的轻量级离线人工智能 (AI) 解决方案结合起来。在这项工作中，我们提出了 Marvin，这是我们开发的一种新型辅助机器人平台，采用基于模块化分层的架构，将灵活的机械设计与用于感知和语音控制的最先进 AI 技术相结合。我们将 Marvin 的设计重点放在三个目标服务功能上：对老年人和行动不便者的监测、远程呈现和连接，以及夜间辅助。与以前的工作相比，我们提出了一个微小的全向平台，它能够实现灵活的移动和有效的避障。此外，我们设计了一种可控的定位装置，它可以轻松地让用户访问连接接口，并扩展摄像头传感器的视觉范围。尽管如此，我们还是仔细考虑了在云服务上收集私人数据所引发的隐私问题，这是商业人工智能辅助人员的一个关键方面。为此，我们展示了如何采用用于视觉感知和语音命令的轻量级深度学习解决方案，并在机器人的嵌入式硬件上完全离线运行。
