An Assistive Robot in an Indoor Scenario: the Stretch Hello Robot as Environment Organizer

Abstract

Assistive robots are common in the research community and are also becoming widespread as commercial solutions, especially for indoor applications, such as domestic settings, offices, or care facilities. The use of a robot in such scenarios can provide value in the form of an increase in efficiency, a reduction in physical strain on humans, and an improvement in accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Motivated by this value addition, this paper proposes the use of the Hello Robot Stretch RE-2 as an assistive robot for organizing an indoor environment. The robot has an arm with three degrees of freedom and a gripper able to grasp and release items. It uses an adversarial comparison of default and current environment scan to perform organization tasks. The study focuses on the utilization of the Stretch RE-2 developed by Hello-Robot Inc. to improve indoor environments, simulated with tables and different objects, providing a comprehensive analysis of the encountered challenges, and offering recommendations for future works.