Dependable Interaction with an Intelligent Home Care Robot

Abstract

Care-O-bot is the prototype of a multi functional home assistant, to be used by elderly people in order to live independently in their homes for a longer time. Easy, intuitive, and dependable operation of the home care system is essential. The interface to the robot consists of a graphical I/O display, speech in/output and various safety and navigation sensors. A three level safety system has been installed on the robot for dependable collision avoidance. To improve fault tolerance, a sensor library has been developed which enables to load drivers for newly detected devices on the fly. Standardized I/O- and diagnosis methods are provided together with the driver so that correct operation of the sensors can constantly be monitored by the application.