A 3D Computer Vision-Guided Robotic Companion for Non-Contact Human Assistance and Rehabilitation
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A 3D Computer Vision-Guided Robotic Companion for Non-Contact Human Assistance and Rehabilitation Tao Shen 1 & Md Rayhan Afsar 2 & He Zhang 3 & Cang Ye 3 & Xiangrong Shen 2 Received: 8 August 2019 / Accepted: 4 September 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract With the rapid aging of the U.S. population, the mobility impairment is becoming a more and more challenging issue that affects a large number of individuals. The research presented in this paper aims at helping the mobility-challenged individuals with a novel robotic companion, which is a walker-type mobile robot capable of accompanying the human user and keeping user at the center for protection and possible power assistance. The robotic companion is equipped with a 3D computer vision system, which provides a unique capability of sensing the human-robot relative position/orientation without physical contact or the need for wearable sensors. As such, the robotic companion enables the user to walk freely with minimum disturbance to his/her normal gait, relieving the user from the physical and cognitive loads associated with the use of traditional assistive devices. For the development of the robotic companion, the authors designed and fabricated a low-cost, differentially steered mobile robotic platform, and also developed a unique image processing system to extract the position/orientation information from the 3D camera-captured images. Furthermore, an advanced motion control system was developed for the robotic companion, which provides novel solutions to the unique challenges such as sway reduction and noise reduction in digital differentiation. To quantify the performance, component and system-level experimentation was conducted, and the results demonstrated that robotic companion and its key components function as desired and the system is expected to reduce the user load and improve the user mobility in real-world scenarios. Keywords Assistive robot . Mobile robot . Computer vision
1 Introduction The rapid aging of the U.S. population nowadays is unprecedented in history: the number of older adults will double in the next 25 years. By 2030, there will 72 million older adults, accounting for 20% of the general population [1]. Under this long-term trend, the impairment of mobility is becoming an increasingly challenging problem affecting a large number of Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-020-01258-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Xiangrong Shen [email protected] 1
College of Aeronautics and Engineering, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
3
Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA
individuals. Older adults gradually lose their physical work capacity due to age-related musculoskeletal degeneration (25% to 30% decline between the ages of 30 and 70 [2]). Individuals with neuromuscular diseases (such as stroke)
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