Service Robots and Automation for the Disabled and Nursing Home Care

The rising number of elderly people and people in need of care results in an increased demand of new solutions to support self-initiative and independent living. Robotics and automation technologies have the potential to support and enhance the quality of our lives. This chapter analyzes the needs of persons with disabilities or age-related limitations and discusses possible tasks that new assistive service robots could support. It gives an overview of available products, selected research activities, and future challenges. Existing technologies can be grouped into two main categories: First, stand-alone devices, operated by the user explicitly or even operating (semi-)autonomously such as mobility aids, e.g., wheelchairs and rollators, manipulation aids, interaction platforms, or integrated mobile manipulators. Second, wearable devices that are physically connected with the user and operated implicitly by measuring their desired limb motion such as in orthoses, exoskeletons, or prostheses. Two developments are discussed as application examples: the robotic home assistant “Care-O-bot®” and the KONSENS-NHE exoskeleton for hand habilitation. An important future challenge in order to make robotic technologies available for everybody is to reduce their costs. On the technological side, user interfaces that allow teaching new tasks to assistive robots easily need to be designed. Finally, safe manipulation of assistive robots among humans must be guaranteed by new sensors and compliance with corresponding safety standards. For active orthoses and exoskeletons, challenges are the achievement of an adequate weight-to-benefit ratio and the design of reliable human-machine interfaces.