Title:
Hand It Over or Set It Down: A User Study of Object Delivery with an Assistive Mobile Manipulator
Hand It Over or Set It Down: A User Study of Object Delivery with an Assistive Mobile Manipulator
Author(s)
Choi, Young Sang
Chen, Tiffany L.
Jain, Advait
Anderson, Cressel D.
Glass, Jonathan D.
Kemp, Charles C.
Chen, Tiffany L.
Jain, Advait
Anderson, Cressel D.
Glass, Jonathan D.
Kemp, Charles C.
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Abstract
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.
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Date Issued
2009
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Post-print