1. ROBCO Mobile – Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot for Elderly Care Dr. techn. Nayden Chivarov, Mag. Iasen Paunski, Mag. Georgi Angelov, Mag. Daniel Radev, MEng Robotics Student Svetlin Penkov, Mag. Vladimir Vladimirov, Eng Student Orlin Dimitrov, Assoc. Prof. Roman Zahariev, Assoc. Prof. Maya Dimitrova Assoc. Prof. N. Shivarov and Prof. Dr. Dr mult. Peter Kopacek INSTITUTE OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND ROBOTICS OF THE BULGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES SERVICE ROBOTICS GROUP Bloc II Acad. Bonchev str., Sofia 1113 Bulgaria
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2. INTRODUCTION
The project focuses on the development, research and prototyping of the “Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot solution which will work in domestic environments for supporting Elderly Care”.
Prognoses of the European Commission show that the tendency in Europe and especially in Bulgaria is continuously growing ageing of the population. Most of the elderly people want to live in their own houses for as long as possible and the proposed Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot can help them with tasks such as stand up or seat down assistance, preparing or warming food, serve and clear table, bring water, book, medicine etc., fetch and carry difficult and heavy objects, video and audio contact with physician or with family members, day and night monitoring and fall preventing.

3. The Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot for Elderly Care consist of the following components:
Intelligent onboard multilevel control systems and ROS based software for the control of the different modules of the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot;
Modular remote control User Interfaces Teleoperation UI – Joystick based; Tactile UI – Touch screen based; Voice UI – Speech recognition based; Gesture UI – Gesture recognizing device; Brain control UI - Brain control devices;
Electro-actuating systems, batteries and automatic recharging systems (docking stations) allowing 24 hours Service;
Mobile Robot Platform - 4 wheels/2 powered wheels Intelligent fully autonomously vehicle with all its systems built on a modular principle able to carry peripheral systems or tools;
Manipulating Articulated Robot Arm System including a proper gripper which will allow different tasks to be performed like fetch an carry, bringing and manipulating difficult objects etc.;
Sensor Systems – including Tactile sensors, Infrared sensors, Ultrasound Sensors, Artificial vision system and Voice generation and recognition systems, which help performing all functions related to environment and user interactions – monitoring of spatial location and orientation of the robot, maintaining proper course, obstacles detection, safety of people and robot itself, object visualization and recognition, robot control and communication between a family member or physician and the Elderly for supporting Care.

4. The goals of the project are realised by the following innovations:
Developing a new user friendly remote control User Interface – depending from the necessity of the Elderly, the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot can be controlled either by Joystick, Tablet, Voice, Gestures or Brain Control Devices.
Intelligent self-learning System – the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot will have the ability to learn from its own experience (already executed tasks) as well as to interpret human behaviors.
Intelligent Decision Making System - the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot for Elderly care will have three main modes:
Manual Mode for manual control of the robot by some of the described above devices
Semi-Autonomous mode will use Decision Making System by executing high level tasks like warm food or bring glass of water
Autonomous mode will use Decision Making System for the Elderly day and night monitoring, fall preventing and for emergency cases
Robot safety system – since the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot will stay in Elderly home and will realize a real interaction with the Elderly, the robot motion must insure Elderly and robot’s safety

5. Key Concept
The key concept of the proposed Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot will be its easy adaptability in order to achieve a wide range of Elderly needs by performing different tasks for supporting Elderly care.
The following tasks will be performed, complying to the main objectives of the project:
Research and development of the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot Controlling System
Research and development of the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot Software Systems
Research and Development of the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot Sensor System
Research and Development of a new user-friendly remote control User Interfaces
Research and Development of a Intelligent Self-learning System
Research and Development of a Intelligent Decision Making System
Research and Development of the Robot Safety System

6. Research and development of the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot Controlling System
WiFi Router
on the robot
User
Interface
I/O Board
Output Drivers
and Sensor Amplifiers
Control
Software
Actuators
Sensors

7. IP Based control board Pixeye Net I/O
Features:
Based on advanced 32-bit microcontroller
(TI Stellaris)
Direct network to hardware control
Direct sensor access via IP networks
Modern element base and design
Minimum external components, compact
size and low power

8. Service Robot Differential Drive Base Control
PWM Output 1
IP control board
Pixeye NetIO
Ethernet
100 Base T
Interface
PWM
&
I/O
pins
Output
Motor Drivers
(H-bridge)
Direction control 1
PWM Output 2
Direction control 2
ADC
inputs
Current Feedback 1
Motor
Current
Sensors
Quadrature Encoder
Inputs
Current Feedback 2
Encoder 1
Motor 1
Encoder 2
Motor 2

9. Research and development of the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot Software Systems

10. Research and development of the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot Sensor Systems
Tactile sensors
Proximity sensors
Acceleration sensors
Vision system
Voice interaction system

11. Research and development of the new user friendly remote control User Interface
Depending from the necessity of the Elderly, the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot will be controlled either by Joystick – Teleoperation UI; Touch screen - Tactile UI; Speech recognition - Voice UI; Gesture recognition- Gesture UI; Brain control - Brain control UI.

12. Research and development of the Intelligent Self-learning System
The Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot will have the ability to learn from its own experience (already executed tasks) as well as to interpret human behaviors. The project will develop techniques to enable a robot to collect and absorb experience generated from semi-autonomous operations and store the annotated information in its knowledge base. As the relevant operations are not only perceived but also performed by the robot, the robot learning solution avoids the curse of dimensionality, and can deal with complex trajectories even with very high degrees of freedom. It also avoids the “correspondence problem”, and can map complicated properties between the teacher and the robot. In this sense, social learning will be explored as advancement from the level of “learning-by-imitation” to the level of “learning-to-imitate” as well as other approaches of social learning modeling.

13. Research and development of the Intelligent Decision Making System
The Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot for Elderly care will have three main modes:
Manual Mode for manual control of the robot by some of the described above devices
Semi-Autonomous mode will use Decision Making System by executing high level tasks like warm food or bring glass of water
Autonomous mode will use Decision Making System for Elderly day and night monitoring, fall preventing and for emergency cases. Similarity measures for robotic operations will be customized to accomplish the innovation.
Depending on the uncertainty involved in the tasks, the proposed Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot will automatically adjust its autonomy level to support the Elderly person. For tasks which the robot is not familiar with, the robot will switch to a manual mode and rely more on the Elderly. For tasks which the robot is highly experienced, the robot will try to engage more - and if it is allowed, even complete the task by itself. New methodologies based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) will be applied to analysis of patterns.

14. Research and development of the Robot safety system
Since the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot will stay in the Elderly home and will perform a real interaction with the Elderly, the robot motion must ensure Elderly and robot’s safety. A new safety-oriented framework will be developed based on user interaction study and robust control laws to ensure safe reactions of the robot if faults occur. Cognitive inference methodology will be developed based on the knowledge that enables a robot to recognise and identify safety critical situations. Safety oriented motion control strategy will be developed to ensure safety.

15. Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot for Elderly Care

16. Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot for Elderly Care Movie

17. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
For more information:
Official presentation of the Intelligent Modular Service Mobile Robot for Elderly Care - 30th November, Sofia at the Main Hall of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,
in the frame of the National Workshop on Service Robotics - European Robotics Week – 02.12, 2011