Assistive Robots for People with Impairments

Assistive robotic manipulators have the potential to support individuals with impairments to regain some of their independence in performing Activities of Daily Living. For individuals with impairments, interaction with assistive robotic manipulators is a very challenging task. In this talk, I will present several interactive approaches to enable people with impairments to collaborate with assistive robots. The first approach focuses on enabling people with tetraplegia to teach the robot how to assist them with drinking. The second approach focuses on an autonomous multi-sensory robotic system, which assists with straw-less drinking. The third approach focuses on robots can learn from human speech. Experimental results for the three approaches will be presented. Furthermore, I will conclude the talk with a brief discussion of future research challenges.