ARPH - Assistant Robot for Handicapped People - A pluridisciplinary project

Philippe HOPPENOT, Etienne COLLE, Omar AIT AIDER, Yves RYBARCZYK.
CEMIF - Complex System Group - University of Evry, 40, rue du Pelvoux, 91020 Evry Cedex, France.
e-mail: hoppenot, ecolle, oaider, yrybarc | @cemif.univ-evry.fr

Abstract

Several projects are in progress in the field of disabled people assistance. Their main particularity is pluridisciplinarity. Technological solutions must be validated by psychologists and disabled people at each step of development to be accepted by end users. ARPH is a manipulator arm mounted on a mobile robot which aims at restoring the manipulative function of an handicapped person. The localisation of the mobile base in indoor partially known environment is an important point. Automatic movements of the mobile robot have already been studied. The analysis of different shared control modes is in progress. Human-machine co-operation is one of the main focus points of the project. Disabled people want to act on the system but do not want to see it working on its one. More, human intervention in the control permits to limit the complexity of the system. In order to make this co-operation effective, the main idea is to give the robot human-like behaviours.

Key words: Disabled people assistance, mobile robotics, localisation, human-machine co-operation.