Home-based assistive robotic care for the elderly and disabled has long been a goal of robotics researchers. Unfortunately, no single group has solved the problem of making robots that will perform a set of tasks sufficient enough to warrant the cost to the end consumer. Numerous advances and improvements in computing, communication and related robotic technologies have been paving the way towards cheaper, more capable robots. We propose a home robot system consisting of a set of heterogeneous robots with different task spaces, cloud computing to enhance the abilities of the system, integration with existing home infrastructure, and compatibility with mobile technology. A high level of integration with the open source software of the Robot Operating System (ROS) is proposed to accelerate the design process. For the exact types of robots, we propose to use an enhanced floor cleaning robot and a mobility and vision assistance robot in the form of an improved rollator walker.

In many assistive robotic systems, the interface to the user is simply a tablet computer or a monitor attached to a single robot. Missing from approaches are the system extensibility made possible with a tablet computer and a division of work between multiple agents. In this paper we present the design for a software interface to connect users to an assistive robot system for the disabled and elderly. The system is comprised of heterogeneous low-cost assistive robots, a home management portal and a cloud computing backend. The system is designed with the premise that all components do not need to be present for the system to function, but it will be improved when expanded by addition of robots and expanded computing capabilities. This paper focuses on developing the interfaces necessary to connect the user to these systems in a simple and easy to comprehend manner for the target user population.

Normally, experiments are done in a controlled environment so that different systems under test can be isolated. The added benefit is that the sensors used are a lot more accurate under controlled conditions. In the experiments perform on underwater robot localization, this was not the case. The sonar localization equipment use perform flawlessly in open water as it was designed to do, but poorly in an indoor pool. It is believed that the sonar had too much power causing too many reflections in the enclosed space.Unfortunately the experiments are better done in a pool so as to control the elements under test. This paper is the search to improve the equipment's accuracy in an enclosed environment by attempting to reduce the power of the sonar via mechanical means.