Voice-Commanded Robot Wheelchair Finds Its Own Way

[Guest guest]

Voice-Commanded Robot Wheelchair Finds Its Own Way

http://medicalnewscenter.com/out/out.cgi?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080922185547.htm

MIT researchers are developing a new kind of autonomous wheelchair

that can learn all about the locations in a given building, and then

take its occupant to a given place in response to a verbal command.

Just by saying " take me to the cafeteria " or " go to my room, " the

wheelchair user would be able to avoid the need for controlling every

twist and turn of the route and could simply sit back and relax as

the chair moves from one place to another based on a map stored in

its memory.

" It's a system that can learn and adapt to the user, " says

Roy, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and co-

developer of the wheelchair. " People have different preferences and

different ways of referring " to places and objects, he says, and the

aim is to have each wheelchair personalized for its user and the

user's environment.

Unlike other attempts to program wheelchairs or other mobile devices,

which rely on an intensive process of manually capturing a detailed

map of a building, the MIT system can learn about its environment in

much the same way as a person would: By being taken around once on a

guided tour, with important places identified along the way. For

example, as the wheelchair is pushed around a nursing home for the

first time, the patient or a caregiver would say: " this is my room "

or " here we are in the foyer " or " nurse's station. "

Also collaborating on the project are Reimer, a research

scientist at MIT's AgeLab, and Seth Teller, professor of computer

science and engineering and head of the Robotics, Vision, and Sensor

Networks (RVSN) group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial

Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Teller says the RVSN group is

developing a variety of machines, of various sizes, that can have

situational awareness, that is, that can " learn these mental maps, in

order to help people do what they want to do, or do it for them. "

Besides the wheelchair, the devices range in scale from a location-

aware cellphone all the way up to an industrial forklift that can

transport large loads from place to place outdoors, autonomously.

Outdoors in the open, such systems can rely on GPS receivers to

figure out where they are, but inside buildings that method usually

doesn't work, so other approaches are needed. Roy and Teller have

been exploring the use of WiFi signals, as well as wide-field cameras

and laser rangefinders, coupled to computer systems that can

construct and localize within an internal map of the environment as

they move around.

" I'm interested in having robots build and maintain a high-fidelity

model of the world, " says Teller, whose central research focus is

developing machines that have situational awareness.

For now, the wheelchair prototype relies on a WiFi system to make its

maps and then navigate through them, which requires setting up a

network of WiFi nodes around the facility in advance. After months of

preliminary tests on campus, they have begun trials in a real nursing

home environment with real patients, at the Boston Home in

Dorchester, a facility where all of the nearly 100 patients have

partial or substantial loss of muscle control and use wheelchairs.

As the research progresses, Roy says he'd like to add a collision-

avoidance system using detectors to prevent the chair from bumping

into other wheelchairs, walls or other obstacles. In addition,Teller

says he hopes to add mechanical arms to the chairs, to aid the

patients further by picking up and manipulating objects -- everything

from flipping a light switch to picking up a cup and bringing it to

the person's lips.

The research has been funded by Nokia and Microsoft.

[Guest guest]

" As the research progresses, Roy says he'd like to add a collision-

avoidance system using detectors to prevent the chair from bumping

into other wheelchairs, walls or other obstacles "

Ha! I'd hate to one of the 'obstacles' that this wheelchair doesn't yet

recognize the need to avoid.

O