Robot Physical Interaction through the combination of Vision, Tactile and Force Feedback
Robot manipulation is a great challenge; it encompasses versatility -adaptation to different situations-, autonomy -independent robot operation-, and dependability -for success under modeling or sensing errors. A complete manipulation task involves, first
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Introduction
According to the World Robotics 2011 report [79], up to the end of 2014, more than 14 million service robots will populate the world. A service robot is a robot which operates partially of fully autonomously to provide services useful to the humans [10]. The group of service robots can be further divided into professional service robots, intended to perform service tasks at a professional level, and personal robots, suitable for education, assistance or entertainment tasks at home. Among these, it is of special interest the group of assistive robots, which main purpose is to help elderly and impaired people in their daily life. It is well-known that the elderly population is considerably increasing in the industrialized countries, in percentage with the overall population. Figure 1.1 shows the eight countries with a higher estimation of elderly population in 2010 and 2050 [135]. It is expected that the percentage of people over 65 years old will almost duplicate in most of the industrialized countries by 2050. In the concrete case of Spain, estimations report that it will be the third country with more elderly people in 2050, only after Japan and Korea. The elderly population constitute, together with impaired people, a group of the society that have to face with innumerable problems in their daily life. According to a report of the Spanish statistics institute [81], in the year 2008 a 23.19% of the
Fig. 1.1 The eight countries with a higher estimation of people over 65 years, in percentage to the overall population, in 2010 and 2050 M. Prats et al.: Robot Physical Interaction through the Combination of Vision, STAR 84, pp. 1–5. c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 springerlink.com
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Introduction
Spanish homes contained at least one disabled person (approximately 3.3 millions of the Spanish homes). In 608.000 of the cases the disabled person was living alone. The report also states that in approximately the 39.85% of the Spanish homes with disabled members, the impaired person is, in addition, more than 65 years old. The most common case of a home containing impaired people above 65 years is that composed of two persons, which represents a 40.48%, whereas in the 24% of the cases, the disabled and elderly person is living alone. The 74% of disabled people report difficulties to perform basic daily activities, such as personal hygiene, dressing, feeding, cooking, doing housework, moving around the home and performing simple tasks. Although this is the particular Spanish situation, these numbers seem to be in agreement with other industrialized countries. Surprisingly, it is estimated that around the 26.6% of the impaired Spanish population (more than a million persons) does not receive any help for performing those tasks for which they have difficulties. This percentage highlights that current technical and personal assistance practices are insufficient. The high-costs of the healthcare sector, together with the lack of independence that assisted people experiment, lead to living condition
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