8 accepted papers
Autonomous robots have the potential to serve as versatile caregivers that improve quality of life for millions of people worldwide. Yet, conducting research in this area presents numerous challenges, including the risks of physical interaction between people and robots. Physics simulations have bee…
People spend a substantial part of their lives at rest in bed. 3D human pose and shape estimation for this activity would have numerous beneficial applications, yet line-of-sight perception is complicated by occlusion from bedding. Pressure sensing mats are a promising alternative, but training data…
Robots have the potential to assist people in bed, such as in healthcare settings, yet bedding materials like sheets and blankets can make observation of the human body difficult for robots. A pressure-sensing mat on a bed can provide pressure images that are relatively insensitive to bedding materi…
By briefly heating the local environment with a heat lamp and observing what happens with a thermal camera, robots could potentially infer properties of their surroundings. However, this form of active thermography introduces large signal variations compared to traditional active thermography, which…
Dressing is a fundamental task of everyday living and robots offer an opportunity to assist people with motor impairments. While several robotic systems have explored robot-assisted dressing, few have considered how a robot can manage errors in human pose estimation, or adapt to human motion in real
Activities of daily living (ADLs) are important for quality of life. Robotic assistance offers the opportunity for people with disabilities to perform ADLs on their own. However, when a complex semi-autonomous system provides real-world assistance, occasional anomalies are likely to occur. Robots th…
There is a considerable need for assistive dressing among people with disabilities, and robots have the potential to fulfill this need. However, training such a robot would require extensive trials in order to learn the skills of assistive dressing. Such training would be time-consuming and require…
When a mobile manipulator functions as an assistive device, the robot's initial configuration and the configuration of the environment can impact the robot's ability to provide effective assistance. Selecting initial configurations for assistive tasks can be challenging due to the high number of deg…