Development of a Mobile Robot for Handicapped People

This paper describes a mobile robot intended for being employed in a multi-agent system. We have already proposed a multi-agent system which realizes patient-aid by helping a lying patient take a distant object on the table. In this paper, a mobile robot agent is developed and is included in the system. An effective man-machine communication strategy is proposed by use of a vision agent settled on the ceiling. If a human (assumed to be a patient) wishes to take an object distant on the floor, he points to the object. The vision agent detects the direction of his arm by image processing and guesses which object he intends to take. The vision agent asks him if it is what he wants and, if yes, the mobile robot runs to take and bring it to him. The system is overviewed with the explanation of a mobile robot. Some experimental results are shown with discussion.