EAGER: Autonomous Mobile Robots for Home Health Care of Motor-function Impaired Persons

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

The project advances the state-of-the-art of various robotics fields, including home health care robotics, robot mechanisms and kinematics, visual servoing, modeling and analysis, estimation and control, search and tracking, and localization and mapping. In addition, the integration of these technologies and its demonstration provides an opportunity to verify the capabilities and limitations of the state-of-the-art technologies, discovering new subsequent robotics problems to tackle. This project addresses the fundamental aspects relevant to many scientific and engineering applications and includes experimental demonstrations, and broadly impacts teaching, training and education. Further, the international collaboration provides graduate students who reside in the rural Southside Virginia opportunities to observe scientific, cultural and political similarities and differences between countries and encourages them to continue their efforts toward research, and to establish an international community of home health care robotics. The project contributes to the modernization of the engineering curriculum in general and the teaching of mobile robotics in particular.