6 GIVING-A-HAND System: The Development of a Task-Specific Robot Appliance

Abstract

The rapidly changing demographics in industrialized nations create a pressing need for effective personal assistive aids that appeal to elderly and disabled users. Our goal is to design robotic aids that are not only affordable and commercially viable but also have universal appeal and benefit. To do so, we explore the creation of the robot appliance, a personal robotic aid with the ability to function within a localized assistive system in a specific environment within the home such as the kitchen. This chapter presents our concept of the robot appliance and details of one of two design studies involving our concept for task-specific, robotic aids. We discuss the GIVING-A-HAND system concept and the results of interviews with elderly and medium-to-high disabled persons that prioritized and refined requirements for the robotic appliance component of the system: a small, counter-top mobile robot, “Addams Hand” that users can remotely control to interact with common kitchen appliances to perform fetch-and-carry tasks.