Smart Feeder Robot for Severely Disabled Patients

Abstract

As Taiwan enters an aging society, the number of disabled people increases accordingly, resulting in a growing burden for longterm care and family care managements. We propose an eye-hand integration system with an infrared sensor attached to the end of the arm. Not only can the accuracy of feeding be controlled, but also the position of the spoon/claw can be micro-controlled while picking up food as cleanly as possible. It is more intelligent than other feeding robot arms. It can automatically adjust the position of the head and face of users of different sizes and orientations. As long as the base of the arm is placed close to the head of the bed, feeding the arm can serve the user without special posture adjustment. At the same time, the users' head are mounted with a laser light and a camera which serves as a lighting sources on multiple dark areas on the food table. Given the lighted instructions, the robot arm is guided to different food plate. Disabled patients can then freely choose the order of eating and enjoy the quality of life. We report the details of constructing such system and presents the image processing algorithms for laser light selection operations.