Robot House 2.0 - Infrastructure for the Study of Smart Home and Autonomous Robotic Systems

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The goal of this proposal is to seek funding to extend the functionalities of the robotics hardware in the University of Hertfordshire's (UH) Robot House (RH), creating the Robot House 2.0 - and, importantly, to make it accessible to other research groups. The new robots to be purchased include the multipurpose and modular care-o-bot 4 which can be tailored to individual user needs and assistance scenarios. This will be complemented by less expensive, smaller platforms with more specialised functionalities: the mobile Pepper robot, Turtlebot 2 and Fetch, Sawyer robot, and the Pioneer LX and Kinova arm/manipulator. Those systems are complemented by already existing robotic hardware in the Robot House, including the telepresence Giraff robot. Having a variety of different robotic systems with differing and complementary functionalities will allow a wide range of innovative smart home and robotics research, opening up completely new scenarios and applications areas ranging from smart home and robotics technology to co-worker scenarios, that require either advanced mobility, telepresence, manipulation or communication abilities. Purchasing these new systems will allow other research groups and industry to use the RH2.0 smart home environment for development, testing and evaluation purposes. Our vision is for RH2.0 to become an easily accessible hub for UK universities and industry conducting research into smart home and robotics technology.