A Shared Autonomy Approach to Robotic Arm Assistance with Daily Activities

高度瘫痪患者依靠他人的照顾和环境的改善来完成日常生活活动(ADL)。由于所需的支持程度，提供瘫痪护理的成本很高。通过技术手段恢复操纵能力将显著提高使用者的生活质量，并将减少瘫痪的长期经济影响，并通过解放照顾者的时间和劳动力(通常是家人或朋友)为社会做出贡献。为此，该项目建议设计并验证一种安装在轮椅上的机器人手臂，该手臂具有增强现实界面，可以实现非触觉的人与机器人交互。重要的是，设计将涉及多模式界面方法，其中包括最近开发的舌头驱动界面、头部方向传感器和语音识别系统。以用户为中心的参与式设计方法将确保工程系统将被四肢瘫痪患者所接受。该奖项还支持协作式人-机器人辅助设备设计的基础研究，包括界面设计和基础机器人视觉和规划算法。这项研究的贡献包括改进了对如何有效地协调人类更高层次的推理和思维过程与当前机械臂的自主操作能力和局限性的理解。机器人应用的社会意义将被用来创造吸引人的教育和推广工程数学的活动。长期目标是通过使轮椅上没有操纵能力的人能够独立进行日常生活活动(ADL)来改变他们的生活，而不管他们所处的环境。满足ADL不同需求的技术往往具有很高的控制复杂性，这阻碍了采用。对于这些技术来说，请求高级别(引导)命令而不是低级别控制信号，并以与用户对世界的概念兼容的方式请求反馈是至关重要的。研究目标是设计和验证一种安装在轮椅上的机械臂，具有增强现实界面和多模式用户界面，用于将人类命令和意图控制环路与机械臂决策和控制环路耦合。该系统的新颖之处在于它是一种共享控制和共享传感辅助技术。该耦合系统需要人的输入来克服机器人视觉的感知限制，并采用机器人规划和操作来克服用户的物理限制。通过让人参与场景解释并向机械臂提供以自我为中心的信息，耦合系统在复杂的操作任务中最大限度地减少和简化了用户输入。相关的研究目标是：(I)设计一个人-机器人增强现实界面系统，将反馈耦合到两个系统(人和机器人)，以传达意图并请求复杂操作任务的高级用户反馈；(Ii)通过参与式设计过程识别操作辅助需求和用户界面设计；(Iii)针对期望的指挥和控制目标评估用户界面；以及(Iv)评估操作系统对任务表现和认知负担的影响。设计独特的共享控制和共享传感系统，并实现拟议的研究目标，将改变辅助机器人技术将用户与技术相结合的方式。将这项研究纳入现有的教育和推广活动中，将向学生推广工程学和机器人技术，并为他们参与日益自动化的世界做好准备。

Persons with high-level paralysis rely on the care of others and the modification of their environment for accomplishing the activities of daily living (ADL). Due to the degree of support required, paralysis is costly to provide care for. Recovering the ability to manipulate through technological means would lead to significant improvements to the quality of life for the user, and would reduce the long-term economic impact of paralysis and contribute to society by freeing up caregiver time and labor (usually a family-member or friend). To that end, the project proposes to design and validate a wheelchair-mounted robotic-arm with an augmented reality interface for enabling non-tactile human-robot interaction. Importantly, the design will involve a multi-modal interface approach, which includes a recently developed tongue drive interface, a head orientation sensor, and a speech recognition system. User-centric and participatory design methods will ensure that the engineered system will be seen favorably by persons with tetraplegia. The award also supports fundamental research into the design of collaborative human-robot assistive devices, including the interface design and the underlying robot vision and planning algorithms. The research contribution includes improved understanding on how to effectively coordinate the higher level reasoning and thought processes of humans with the autonomous operation capabilities and limitations of current robotic arms. The social significance of the robotics application will be capitalized to create engaging educational and outreach activities in promotion of engineering mathematics.The long-term goal is to transform the lives of wheelchair bound persons with limited to no manipulation abilities by enabling them to independently perform the activities of daily living (ADL) irrespective of their environment. Technology meeting the varied needs of the ADL tends to have high control complexity, which impedes adoption. It is essential for these technologies to request high-level (guiding) commands rather than low-level control signals, and to request feedback in a manner compatible with the user's conception of the world. The research goal is to engineer and validate a wheelchair-fitted robotic-arm with an augmented reality interface and a multi-modal user interface for coupling the human command and intent control loop with the robotic-arm decision and control loop. The novelty of the proposed system is that it is a shared control and a shared sensing assistive technology. The coupled system requires human input to overcome the perceptual limitations of robot vision, and employs robotic planning and manipulation to overcome the physical limitations of the user. By involving the human for scene interpretation and by providing ego-centric information to the robot arm, the coupled system minimizes and simplifies user input during complex manipulation tasks. The associated research objectives are to (I) engineer a human-robot augmented reality interface system with coupled feedback to the two systems (human and robot) for communicating intent and requesting high-level user feedback for complex manipulation tasks, (II) identify the manipulation assistance needs and user interface design through a participatory design process, (III) evaluate the user interface with respect to the desired command and control objectives, and (IV) assess the impact of the operational system with respect to task performance and cognitive burden. Engineering the unique shared control and shared sensing system and achieving the proposed research objectives would transform the way that assistive robotic technologies couple the user to technology. Incorporating the research into existing education and outreach activities would promote engineering and robotics to students and prepare them for participation in an increasingly automated world.