Introducing GARMI - A Service Robotics Platform to Support the Elderly at Home: Design Philosophy, System Overview and First Results

This letter introduces GARMI, a service robotics platform conceptualized with a focus on assisting elderly at home. GARMI is designed to provide support with household tasks, as an avatar for tactile-enabled communication and as an interface for telemedicine and emergency assistance. Its unique huma...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters 2021-07, Vol.6 (3), p.5857-5864
Main Authors: Trobinger, Mario, Jahne, Christoph, Qu, Zheng, Elsner, Jean, Reindl, Anton, Getz, Sebastian, Goll, Thore, Loinger, Benjamin, Loibl, Tamara, Kugler, Christoph, Calafell, Carles, Sabaghian, Mohamadreza, Ende, Tobias, Wahrmann, Daniel, Parusel, Sven, Haddadin, Simon, Haddadin, Sami
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Avatars
compliance and impedance control
Computer architecture
Design
Exoskeletons
Haptic interfaces
Humanoid
Humanoid robot systems
Humanoid robots
Man-machine interfaces
Older people
physical human-robot interaction
Rapid prototyping
Remote control
Research facilities
Robotics
Robots
Senior citizens
Sensory feedback
service robotics
Service robots
Software
Task analysis
Telemedicine
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Summary:This letter introduces GARMI, a service robotics platform conceptualized with a focus on assisting elderly at home. GARMI is designed to provide support with household tasks, as an avatar for tactile-enabled communication and as an interface for telemedicine and emergency assistance. Its unique humanoid design features a sensor-equipped multi-modal head designed for natural human-machine communication as well as a whole-body torque-control interface for safe physical human-machine interaction. GARMI's modular software architecture and distinctive whole-body control scheme allows multimodal dynamic coupling. Additionally, every system component can actively produce as well as sense forces and can thus serve as a haptic feedback interface when interacting with its environment and users. Furthermore, GARMI is the first mobile humanoid designed with specialized use-inspired avatar stations: PARTI for dual-arm-based exoskeleton-like remote-control with force-feedback and MUCKI for transparent remote doctor-patient interaction with both audiovisual and safe haptic feedback. The specialized software architecture allows for rapid prototyping and field-testing of new behaviors for telemedicine, multi-modal interaction and autonomous physical and service assistance. Our first results reveal the potential of our use-driven force-based whole-body control mobile humanoid for daily living and telemedicine scenarios in an elderly care research facility.
ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2021.3082012