Intelligent personal robots for healthcare environments

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The service and personal robotics industry is experiencing a massive growth spurt projected to reach more than $19 million in revenues by 2017. By 2025, it is expected to rival the automobile and computer industries in both dollars and jobs. One of the main motivations of incorporating robots into society is due to the increase in the world's elderly population. Canada along with other developed economies is facing severe demographic challenges due to a low population growth rate coupled with an aging population. Population aging is a complex issue that concerns not only the well-being of our elders, but also brings forth severe health, social, and economic problems. Although the robotics industry in Canada is expanding, it is growing at a substantially slower rate than in Japan, the U.S., and Europe. There exists an urgent need to promote serious initiatives to nurture research in personal/service robotics and develop made-in-Canada service/personal robotic technologies. These types of robots represent a fundamentally important and unique form of strategic technology in terms of their potential to boost Canada's industrial competitiveness as well as benefit the quality of life of Canadians. This project proposes to develop assistive intelligence for personal robots that will encompass the explicit reasoning needed in order for these robots to schedule and carry out multiple assistive activities in human-centered environments. In collaboration with our industry partner Dr. Robot. Inc., we focus on the development of intelligent personal robots to autonomously assist elderly individuals living in assisted living facilities with activities intended to improve quality of life. The expected outcome of this project is the development and implementation of a multi-task planning and scheduling architecture that will allow personal robots to perform multiple activities in a real-world multi-person, dynamic indoor environment.