Humanoid robots are the latest bet of the robotics community in advancing ways robots carry out a large variety of tasks that generate profit or increase quality of life for people. While their capabilities might extend to assistive care tasks, such as feeding, dressing, or household tasks, it is unclear if people are comfortable with having humanoid robots in their homes assisting with those tasks. In this paper we explore people’s attitudes towards assistive humanoid robots in the the home. We present two questionnaire studies, with 76 total participants, in which people are shown imaginary images of humanoid robots performing assistance tasks in the home, along with special purpose robot alternatives. Participants are asked to rate and compare robots in the context of eight different tasks and share their reasoning. The second study also shows participants pictures of real humanoid robot both without any context and in the context of in-home assistance tasks, and asks their opinions about these robots. Our findings indicate that people prefer special purpose robots over humanoids in most cases and their preferences vary by task. Although people think that humanoids are acceptable for assistance with some tasks, they express concerns about having them in their homes.
Roboticists often design with the assumption that assistive robots should be fully autonomous. However, it remains unclear whether users prefer highly autonomous robots, as prior work in assistive robotics suggests otherwise. High robot autonomy can reduce the user's sense of agency, which represents feeling in control of one's environment. How much control do users, in fact, want over the actions of robots used for in-home assistance? We investigate how robot autonomy levels affect users' sense of agency and the autonomy level they prefer in contexts with varying risks. Our study asked participants to rate their sense of agency as robot users across four distinct autonomy levels and ranked their robot preferences with respect to various household tasks. Our findings revealed that participants' sense of agency was primarily influenced by two factors: (1) whether the robot acts autonomously, and (2) whether a third party is involved in the robot's programming or operation. Notably, an end-user programmed robot highly preserved users' sense of agency, even though it acts autonomously. However, in high-risk settings, e.g., preparing a snack for a child with allergies, they preferred robots that prioritized their control significantly more. Additional contextual factors, such as trust in a third party operator, also shaped their preferences.
Infants at risk for developmental delays such as Cerebral Palsy, can often be distinguished through observation of their motion and postural stability. In an effort to provide more accessible and quantitative metrics for the early detection of such impairments, this study focuses on the development of a 6-degree of freedom (DOF) robotic infant simulator. The robotic simulator provides insight into the relationship between infant motion and center of pressure (COP), a common measure that is capable of distinguishing impaired infants through quantification of postural stability. We focus on the impact of a 2 DOF motion in the trunk on COP through two experiments where we 1) Compare the impacts on COP of the limbs and the trunk, and 2) Compare the robot’s COP to a real infant’s. Our results indicate that motion in the trunk plays a strong part in replicating an infant’s COP. Additionally, we can observe that changes in COP exhibit clear and repeatable patterns with respect to motion in each DOF. Future directions suggest a look at how different motions in the trunk affect infant COP.
Cooperative robots for intraocular surgery allow surgeons to perform vitreoretinal surgery with high precision and stability. Several robot structural designs have shown capabilities to perform these surgeries. This research investigates the comparative performance of a serial and parallel cooperative-controlled robot in completing a retinal vessel-following task, with a focus on human-robot interaction performance and user experience. Our results indicate that despite differences in robot structure and interaction forces and torques, the two robots exhibited similar levels of performance in terms of general robot-to-patient interaction and average operating time. These findings have implications for the development and implementation of surgical robotics, suggesting that both serial and parallel cooperative-controlled robots can be effective for vitreoretinal surgery tasks
Retinal surgery involves manipulating very delicate tissues within the confined area of eyeball. In such demanding practices, patient involuntary head movement might abruptly raise tool-to-eyeball interaction forces which would be detrimental to eye. This study is aimed at implementing different force control strategies and evaluating how they contribute to attaining sclera force safety while patient head drift is present. To simulate patient head movement, a piezoelectric-actuated linear stage is used to produce random motions in a single direction in random time intervals. Having an eye phantom attached to the linear stage then an experienced eye surgeon is asked to manipulate the eye and repeat a mock surgical task both with and without the assist of the Steady-Hand Eye Robot. For the freehand case, warning sounds were provided to the surgeon as auditory feedback to alert him about excessive slclra forces. For the robot-assisted experiments two variants of an adaptive sclera force control and a virtual fixture method were deployed to see how they can maintain eye safety under head drift circumstances. The results indicate that the developed robot control strategies are able to compensate for head drift and keep the sclera forces under safe levels as well as the free hand operation.
