Service Robotics

This book provides a navigating introductory overview of the fundamental concepts, principles and problems in the field of roboethics (robot ethics). Medical, assistive, socialized,and war robot ethics is included and a review of Japanese roboethics is made.

Technological integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning in the Prosthetic and Orthotic industry and in the field of assistive technology has become boon for the Persons with Disabilities. The concept of neural network has been used by the leading manufacturers of rehabilitation aids for simulating various anatomical and biomechanical functions of the lost parts of the human body. The involvement of human interaction with various agents’ i.e. electronic circuitry, software, robotics, etc. has made a revolutionary impact in the rehabilitation field to develop devices like Bionic leg, mind or thought control prosthesis and exoskeletons. Application of Artificial Intelligence and robotics technology has a huge impact in achieving independent mobility and enhances the quality of life in Persons with Disabilities (PwDs).

Service and personal care robots are starting to
cross the threshold into the wilderness of everyday life,
where they are supposed to interact with inexperienced lay
users in a changing environment. In order to function as
intended, robots must become independent entities that
monitor themselves and improve their own behaviours
based on learning outcomes in practice. This poses a great
challenge to robotics, which we are calling the ‘‘autonomysafety-
paradox’’ (ASP). The integration of robot applications
into society requires the reconciliation of two conflicting
aspects: increasing machine autonomy and
ensuring safety in end-use. As the level of robot autonomy
grows, the risk of accidents will increase, and it will
become more and more difficult to identify who is
responsible for any damage incurred. However, emphasizing
safety impairs the autonomous functioning of the
robot. This problem implies the need for a broadened
concept of product safety. Our comparative study shows
that the institutional framing of the ASP as well as concrete
solutions to this problem differs between Europe and Japan
in two respects: (1) the understanding of robot agency and
(2) the concept of ‘‘appropriate’’ user–robot interaction.

Stroke is a leading cause of disability in the world and the use of robots in rehabilitation has become increasingly common. The Fourth Industrial Revolutions has created a novel and wide range of options for the involvement of computer-guided and artificially intelligent machines to be used in rehabilitation. In this chapter we critically review some of the literature on the use of robots in rehabilitation, and emphasize the diversity of approaches in this burgeoning field. We argue that there is a need to consolidate interdisciplinary evidence on robotics and rehabilitation in a systematic way, as the alternative is to have a literature that continues to grow, following the interests of various specialists, but without offering a synoptic assessment of what is available to medical specialists and patients. A literature review using Scopus and Web of Science, coupled with the Briggs Institute's Critical Appraisal Tool: Checklist for Case Reports was conducted. The two databases were systematically searched using inter-disciplinary keywords in Feb 2019. An initial search of the databases produced 9,894 articles. After rigorous reviews, 35 articles were screened and selected for further interpretation. We examined the current studies on the efficiency and effectiveness of the robot interventions and produced a taxonomy of the review. An original finding of the current robotics in rehabilitation landscaping are critical presented with recommendations and concluding remarks concerning interdisciplinary impact.

The community-based generation of content has been tremendously successful in the World Wide Web—people help each other by providing information that could be useful to others. We are trying to transfer this approach to robotics in order to help robots acquire the vast amounts of knowledge needed to competently perform everyday tasks. RoboEarth is intended to be a web community by robots for robots to autonomously share descriptions of tasks they have learned, object models they have created, and environments they have explored. In this paper, we report on the formal language we developed for encoding this information and present our approaches to solve the inference problems related to finding information, to determining if information is usable by a robot, and to grounding it on the robot platform.

In this work, we approach the problem of a box transport by the robots that are requested to bring a box from an arbitrary initial to some preassigned target position. The robots are modeled as rational collaborative autonomous agents working on their movement coordination in a discrete state space. The proposed method for coordinating the multirobot system is a two-level control model in which on the upper level, a Virtual Structure (VS) agent calculates offline the box trajectory from the initial to the goal position with incomplete obstacles data and informs the robots of the nominal route. The robots on the lower level, on the basis of the preassigned positions and the data about the unforeseen obstacles sensed by limited range sensors and exchanged among all the robots, individually optimize their local movement objective functions to mutually push the box following a preassigned trajectory in a safe manner. When the robots, due to the unforeseen obstacles, move from the trajectory defined by the VS agent too far away, more than a predefined distance, they contact the VS agent for the recalculation of the same. The results of the proposed coordination model's simulation in 2D environment are described.

Robotic systems and technologies step out of
research laboratories jointly with information about longterm
goals of technological inquiry they are lined up with
and about the short-term objectives guiding daily laboratory
activities. These various ingredients play crucial roles
in the pursuit of what are called here technological
research programs. A comprehensive ethical framing of
technological research programs is decomposed here into
the ethical framing of their long-term and short-term goals,
respectively. This approach to the ethical framing of
technological research is exemplified by reference to fundamental
rights in the context of technological research
programs on elderly care and child care robots. Moreover,
its significance is highlighted in connection with democratic
decision-making about new and emerging technologies,
as well as in connection with the cultural production
of ignorance which is induced by missing information
about the protection and promotion of fundamental rights
in the specific context of robotic technologies.


Keywords: Applied ethics  Robotics 
Technological research programs  Elderly care
robots  Child care robots  Fundamental rights 
Agnotology

Abstract—Although since the days of the Shakey robot, there have been a rich variety of mobile robots, we realize that there were still no general autonomous, unsupervised mobile robots servicing users in our buildings. In this paper, we contribute the algorithms and results of our successful deployment of a service mobile robot agent, CoBot, in our multi-floor office environment. CoBot accepts requests from users, autonomously navigates between floors of the building, and asks for help when needed in a symbiotic relationship ...

The scope of this chapter is the development of an aerial manipulator platform using an octarotor drone with an attached manipulator. An on-board spherical camera provides visual information for the drone’s surroundings, while a Pan-Tilt-Zoom camera system is used to track targets. A powerful computer with a GPU offers significant on-board computational power for the visual servoing of the aerial manipulator system. This vision system, along with the Inertial Management Unit based controller provides exemplary guidance in confined and outdoor spaces. Coupled with the manipulator’s force sensing capabilities the system can interact with the environment. This aerial manipulation system is modular as far as attaching various payloads depending on the application (i.e., environmental sensing, facade cleaning and others, aerial netting for evader-drone geofencing, and others). Experimental studies using a motion capture system are offered to validate the system’s efficiency.