Intelligent Live Environment Design with Assistive Robots for Vulnerable Persons

We present in this paper several ideas about the usability of the robotic arms and mobile robots as an assistive technology in a smart house where people with disabilities daily live. First, psychological and social aspects of smart home technology are presented and after that the modularity and standardization processes are discussed. Next we propose a smart house plan, equipped with a mobile robot which has a manipulator arm. This robotic system is used to help vulnerable persons, the handicapped men vehicle seat being equipped with a robotic arm which can manipulate objects by a hyper-redundant gripper. For the control of the processes in the smart house, we propose a hierarchical control system and for the mobile robot we use the artificial potential field method. Also, this paper points out the edutainment concept (EDUcation and enterTAINMENT) by robotics. Finally, some applications are presented.