Organizational Unit:

Healthcare Robotics Lab

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70652

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Assistive Mobile Manipulation for Self-Care Tasks Around the Head

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014) Hawkins, Kelsey P. ; Grice, Phillip M. ; Chen, Tiffany L. ; King, Chih-Hung ; Kemp, Charles C.

Human-scale mobile robots with arms have the potential to assist people with a variety of tasks. We present a proof-of-concept system that has enabled a person with severe quadriplegia named Henry Evans to shave himself in his own home using a general purpose mobile manipulator (PR2 from Willow Garage). The robot primarily provides assistance by holding a tool (e.g., an electric shaver) at user-specified locations around the user’s head, while he/she moves his/her head against it. If the robot detects forces inappropriate for the task (e.g., shaving), it withdraws the tool. The robot also holds a mirror with its other arm, so that the user can see what he/she is doing. For all aspects of the task, the robot and the human work together. The robot uses a series of distinct semi-autonomous subsystems during the task to navigate to poses next to the wheelchair, attain initial arm configurations, register a 3D model of the person’s head, move the tool to coarse semantically-labeled tool poses (e.g, “Cheek”), and finely position the tool via incremental movements. Notably, while moving the tool near the user’s head, the robot uses an ellipsoidal coordinate system attached to the 3D head model. In addition to describing the complete robotic system, we report results from Henry Evans using it to shave both sides of his face while sitting in his wheelchair at home. He found the process to be long (54 minutes) and the interface unintuitive. Yet, he also found the system to be comfortable to use, felt safe while using it, was satisfied with it, and preferred it to a human caregiver.
An investigation of responses to robot-initiated touch in a nursing context

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-10) Chen, Tiffany L. ; King, Chih-Hung Aaron ; Thomaz, Andrea L. ; Kemp, Charles C.

Physical human-robot interaction has the potential to be useful in a number of domains, but this will depend on how people respond to the robot’s actions. For some domains, such as healthcare, a robot is likely to initiate physical contact with a person’s body. In order to investigate how people respond to this type of interaction, we conducted an experiment with 56 people in which a robotic nurse autonomously touched and wiped each participant’s forearm. On average, participants had a favorable response to the first time the robot touched them. However, we found that the perceived intent of the robot significantly influenced people’s responses. If people believed that the robot intended to clean their arms, the participants tended to respond more favorably than if they believed the robot intended to comfort them, even though the robot’s manipulation behavior was the same. Our results suggest that roboticists should consider this social factor in addition to the mechanics of physical interaction. Surprisingly, we found that participants in our study responded less favorably when given a verbal warning prior to the robot’s actions. In addition to these main results, we present post-hoc analyses of participants’ galvanic skin responses (GSR), open-ended responses, attitudes towards robots, and responses to a second trial.
Robots for Humanity: A Case Study in Assistive Mobile Manipulation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-03) Chen, Tiffany L. ; Ciocarlie, Matei ; Cousins, Steve ; Grice, Phillip M. ; Hawkins, Kelsey ; Hsiao, Kaijen ; Kemp, Charles C. ; King, Chih-Hung ; Lazewatsky, Daniel A. ; Nguyen, Hai ; Paepcke, Andreas ; Pantofaru, Caroline ; Smart, William D. ; Takayama, Leila

Assistive mobile manipulators have the potential to one day serve as surrogates and helpers for people with disabilities, giving them the freedom to perform tasks such as scratching an itch, picking up a cup, or socializing with their families. This article introduces a collaborative project with the goal of putting assistive mobile manipulators into real homes to work with people with disabilities. Through a participatory design process in which users have been actively involved from day one, we are identifying and developing assistive capabilities for the PR2 robot. Our approach is to develop a diverse suite of open source software tools that blend the capabilities of the user and the robot. Within this article, we introduce the project, describe our progress, and discuss lessons we have learned.
Older Adults Medication Management in the Home: How can Robots Help?

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-03) Prakash, Akanksha ; Beer, Jenay M. ; Deyle, Travis ; Smarr, Cory-Ann ; Chen, Tiffany L. ; Mitzner, Tracy L. ; Kemp, Charles C. ; Rogers, Wendy A.

Successful management of medications is critical to maintaining healthy and independent living for older adults. However, medication non-adherence is a common problem with a high risk for severe consequences [5], which can jeopardize older adults’ chances to age in place [1]. Well-designed robots assisting with medication management tasks could support older adults’ independence. Design of successful robots will be enhanced through understanding concerns, attitudes, and preferences for medication assistance tasks. We assessed older adults’ reactions to medication hand-off from a mobile manipulator with 12 participants (68-79 years). We identified factors that affected their attitudes toward a mobile manipulator for supporting general medication management tasks in the home. The older adults were open to robot assistance; however, their preferences varied depending on the nature of the medication management task. For instance, they preferred a robot (over a human) to remind them to take medications, but preferred human assistance for deciding what medication to take and for administering the medication. Factors such as perceptions of one’s own capability and robot reliability influenced their attitudes.
Informing Assistive Robots with Models of Contact Forces from Able-Bodied Face Wiping and Shaving

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-09) Hawkins, Kelsey P. ; King, Chih-Hung ; Chen, Tiffany L. ; Kemp, Charles C.

Hygiene and feeding are activities of daily living (ADLs) that often involve contact with a person's face. Robots can assist people with motor impairments to perform these tasks by holding a tool that makes contact with the care receiver's face. By sensing the forces applied to the face with the tool, robots could potentially provide assistance that is more comfortable, safe, and effective. In order to inform the design of robotic controllers and assistive robots, we investigated the forces able-bodied people apply to themselves when wiping and shaving their faces. We present our methods for capturing and modeling these forces, results from a study with 9 participants, and recommendations for assistive robots. Our contributions include a trapezoidal force model that assumes participants have a target force they attempt to achieve for each stroke of the tool. We discuss advantages of this 3 parameter model and show that it fits our data well relative to other candidate models. We also provide statistics of the models' rise rates, fall rates, and target forces for the 9 participants in our study. In addition, we illustrate how the target forces varied based on the task, participant, and location on the face.
Touched By a Robot: An Investigation of Subjective Responses to Robot-initiated Touch

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-03) Chen, Tiffany L. ; King, Chih-Hung ; Thomaz, Andrea L. ; Kemp, Charles C.

By initiating physical contact with people, robots can be more useful. For example, a robotic caregiver might make contact to provide physical assistance or facilitate communication. So as to better understand how people respond to robot-initiated touch, we conducted a 2x2 between-subjects experiment with 56 people in which a robotic nurse autonomously touched and wiped the subject's forearm. Our independent variables were whether or not the robot verbally warned the person before contact, and whether the robot verbally indicated that the touch was intended to clean the person's skin (instrumental touch) or to provide comfort (affective touch). On average, regardless of the treatment, participants had a generally positive subjective response. However, with instrumental touch people responded significantly more favorably. Since the physical behavior of the robot was the same for all trials, our results demonstrate that the perceived intent of the robot can significantly influence a person's subjective response to robot-initiated touch. Our results suggest that roboticists should consider this factor in addition to the mechanics of physical interaction. Unexpectedly, we found that participants tended to respond more favorably without a verbal warning. Although inconclusive, our results suggest that verbal warnings prior to contact should be carefully designed, if used at all.
Older Adults' Acceptance of Assistive Robots for the Home

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011) Mitzner, Tracy L. ; Smarr, Cory-Ann ; Beer, Jenay M. ; Chen, Tiffany L. ; Springman, Jennifer Megan ; Prakash, Akanksha ; Kemp, Charles C. ; Rogers, Wendy A.
Towards an Assistive Robot that Autonomously Performs Bed Baths for Patient Hygiene

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-10) King, Chih-Hung ; Chen, Tiffany L. ; Jain, Advait ; Kemp, Charles C.

This paper describes the design and implementation of a behavior that allows a robot with a compliant arm to perform wiping motions that are involved in bed baths. A laser-based operator-selection interface enables an operator to select an area to clean, and the robot autonomously performs a wiping motion using equilibrium point control. We evaluated the performance of the system by measuring the ability of the robot to remove an area of debris on human skin. We tested the performance of the behavior algorithm by commanding the robot to wipe off a 1-inch square area of debris placed on the surface of the upper arm, forearm, thigh, and shank of a human subject. Using image processing, we determined the hue content of the debris and used this representation to determine the percentage of debris that remained on the arm after the robot completed the task. In our experiments, the robot removed most of the debris (>96%) on four parts of the limbs. In addition, the robot performed the wiping task using relatively low force (<;3 N).
Lead Me by the Hand: Evaluation of a Direct Physical Interface for Nursing Assistant Robots

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-03) Chen, Tiffany L. ; Kemp, Charles C.

When a user is in close proximity to a robot, physical contact becomes a potentially valuable channel for communication. People often use direct physical contact to guide a person to a desired location (e.g., leading a child by the hand) or to adjust a person's posture for a task (e.g., a dance instructor working with a dancer). Within this paper, we present an implementation and evaluation of a direct physical interface for a human-scale anthropomorphic robot. We define a direct physical interface (DPI) to be an interface that enables a user to influence a robot's behavior by making contact with its body. Human-human interaction inspired our interface design, which enables a user to lead our robot by the hand and position its arms. We evaluated this interface in the context of assisting nurses with patient lifting, which we expect to be a high-impact application area. Our evaluation consisted of a controlled laboratory experiment with 18 nurses from the Atlanta area of Georgia, USA. We found that our DPI significantly outperformed a comparable wireless gamepad interface in both objective and subjective measures, including number of collisions, time to complete the tasks, workload (Raw Task Load Index), and overall preference. In contrast, we found no significant difference between the two interfaces with respect to the users' perceptions of personal safety.
Hand It Over or Set It Down: A User Study of Object Delivery with an Assistive Mobile Manipulator

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009) Choi, Young Sang ; Chen, Tiffany L. ; Jain, Advait ; Anderson, Cressel D. ; Glass, Jonathan D. ; Kemp, Charles C.

Delivering an object to a user would be a generally useful capability for service robots. Within this paper, we look at this capability in the context of assistive object retrieval for motor-impaired users. We first describe a behavior-based system that enables our mobile robot EL-E to autonomously deliver an object to a motor-impaired user. We then present our evaluation of this system with 8 motor-impaired patients from the Emory ALS Center. As part of this study, we compared handing the object to the user (direct delivery) with placing the object on a nearby table (indirect delivery). We tested the robot delivering a cordless phone, a medicine bottle, and a TV remote, which were ranked as three of the top four most important objects for robotic delivery by ALS patients in a previous study. Overall, the robot successfully delivered these objects in 126 out of 144 trials (88%) with a success rate of 97% for indirect delivery and 78% for direct delivery. In an accompanying survey, participants showed high satisfaction with the robot with 4 people preferring direct delivery and 4 people preferring indirect delivery. Our results indicate that indirect delivery to a surface can be a robust and reliable delivery method with high user satisfaction, and that robust direct delivery will require methods that handle diverse postures and body types.