Robotic assistants for elderly & disabled
One of NeuroRobotics missions is to provide various robotic solutions to assist the less able & elderly.
Background
Exoskeleton Systems
Exoskeleton devices fall into the category of ‘robot extensions’ where the robotic mechanism is effectively ‘worn’ by the user and provides extra functionality and/or power that the user ordinarily doesn’t posses. To this day exoskeletons have been confined to academic research labs or industrial design companies - with little or no commercially available systems. This is in part due to the costs to develop , the costs to manufacture, the safety implications (as the mechanism is directly linked to the human body) and user friendliness.
Any motorised mechanical device that is physically attached to or ‘worn’ by the user can clearly provide many benefits relating to augmenting the users own limbs. However, the mechanical design and associated electronics required to control this system safely comes at a high price. By definition the exoskeleton needs to be powerful enough to move the users limb to be of any practical use - but this power needs to be controlled in such a way to not over extend any of the user’s joints, drive their joints in the wrong direction, stretch or compress any of their limbs, cause any distress to the user. The motors need precise control in terms of positioning, accelerations, velocities, intertias & forces - as well as controlling each joint of the exoskeleton to ensure a free and natural motion of the user’s limbs. The level of electronic control to ensure safety under all conditions is extremely important for a user with no disabilities or illness. It is clearly even more vital to ensure absolute safety to a user who has a serious disability with fragile limbs.
Robot Assistants
A Robot assistant is a robotic arm device that incorporates varying levels of functionality and autonomy that is essentially remotely controlled by the user in various ways - and is external to the user - i.e. not physically attached.
Currently available Systems
Various robotic assistant devices exist with approximately 300 systems documented - with a large majority of these systems residing in university research laboratories. The costs to produce these systems vary from $9,600 to $100,000 with an average cost of $33,000 - with some 30% of these employed for clinical research. Even fewer companies actually provide real commercial product development and support as yet. There are several barriers to market entry - such as poor user interfaces, isolation from clinical reality, too expensive to manufacture, lack of portability, lack of capital available from the users that actually need the systems & various safety issues and associated legal implications.
Robotic Arm solution with the NeuroArm™ 3.x models
Examples of tasks NeuroArm™ 3.x Robot arm could assist user with:
- Collecting items and delivering to user
- Opening/closing house doors / fridge door
- Serving meals
- Serving drinks
- Making tea / coffee
- Changing DVDs, videos , CDs etc
- Scratching face
- Playing games (e.g. chess)
- Turning on & off switches - lights, heating etc
- Answering the phone
Safety Features
- NeuroBackdrive
- Active compliance / joint deflection sensors
- Torque limits
- Emergency shutdown - halts all joints & removes forces
- Speed, force & acceleration control
- Outer body cover plates
- Outer cushioned ‘skin’ covering all robot arm and joints
- integrated obstacle detection / avoidance system
- kinematically constrained boundary control of forces, speeds & accelerations surrounding user space envelope
- Robot motor controller dual redundancy
Robot Control Methods
Alternative control methods
Phased deployment
Taking into consideration the needs of several users , weighing up all the various risk factors involved with an exoskeleton solution, and drawing on the wealth of experience we have within NeuroRobotics - we propose here a highly flexible robotic arm assistant device that could be delivered in 6 phases.
Such a phased delivery of the system has several key advantages :
- The 1st phase can be up and running quickly at relatively low cost - to provide the user a high level of autonomy at minimal risk in terms of the aforementioned safety.
- Phase 1 will also enable the user to become acquainted with the controls - while providing important feedback to NeuroRobotics such that we can optimise all the parameters and program the system to best suit the users own preferences.
- As the user becomes comfortable with the controls & the robot - we can progress to subsequent phase - Phase 2, Phase 3 and Phase 4 - each incorporating more & more functionality to provide the user further independence. We can also adapt what is in each phase accordingly. These are not rigid - but are based on our current judgment of the typical needs.
- Phase 5 introduces a 3 degree of freedom wrist brace/support mechanism with a failsafe magnetic fixture - that will enable what the customer was hoping to achieve with the exoskeleton system, but within a significantly reduced risk setup that the user has grown accustomed to operating & NeuroRobotics have had time to thoroughly test.
Please email us with your design / application enquiry: design@neurorobotics.co.uk alternatively - please fill in our enquiry form stating an overview of your requirenment. We will contact you shortly