Elderly Care

Automation Supporting Prolonged Independent Residence for the Elderly (ASPIRE)

As the proportion of elderly population increases, there is a critical need to develop technology to assist older population in their daily activities. To significantly extend the duration of the lifespan in which older adults are able to safely and independently “age in place”, our lab got funded by NSF to work on “Automation Supporting Prolonged Independent Residence for the Elderly” (ASPIRE). This project aims to explore the use of small aerial and ground co-robots in domestic environment. Study shows that for the types of daily activity assistance, fetching objects from the floor or another room, reaching for objects, and finding/delivering items are among those tasks which are preferred to be completed by robot. Thus, it is necessary to design co-robots in a way that promotes comfortable interaction with humans and their environment.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/YoUvRaTnA8c[/youtube]
[youtube]https://youtu.be/gRN_dfu94dY[/youtube]
The images below show some of the autonomous vehicles used and delevoped in our lab to assist elderly in tasks such as bringing them their medication, cell phone, or other small household items.

At ACRL we investigate the execution of tasks involving aerial manipulations, including positioning, grasping, and transporting of objects performed by an aerial vehicle, which in most cases is a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), equipped with a gripper (end-effector) and/or robotic manipulator. Such Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) gained considerable attention recently as not only the need for robust aerial manipulation keeps increasing, but also new developments in flight control and hardware allow for more ambitious and aggressive flight tasks to be safely executed.The research focuses on elderly care under the ASPIRE research framework where small aerial vehicles augmented with a manipulator are being developed to assist in daily indoor activities. The research work includes but is not limited to: mechanical design, dynamical analysis, robust adaptive flight control law design, machine learning, and trajectory generation.Currently we have two flying prototypes with different manipulator topologies and parameters focusing on a large manipulator to quadcopter mass ratio, showcased below.