I-feed: A robotic platform of an assistive feeding robot for the disabled elderly population.

BACKGROUND: Over time, scholars have invented various types of feeding robots to help patients with hand disabilities. However, most commercially available feeding robots are functionally simple or expensive. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to develop a cheap, multi-functional feeding robot with excellent performance to help disabled elderly eat independently. METHODS: Our feeding robot (called 'I-feed') uses human-computer interaction based on voice recognition. The feeding system we developed with a four-degree-of-freedom robotic arm is capable of completing the two tasks of food selection and feeding through speech recognition, but also simultaneously meets users' diverse needs with three bowls. We also designed a U-shaped table to adjust the height of the feeding robot. RESULTS: This newly developed feeding robot can not only select bowls with different foods by efficient voice commands, but also adapts to users of different heights through a U-shaped table with an adjustable height. CONCLUSIONS: The experimental results show that the accuracy of speech recognition is excellent, and the robot arm can perform the corresponding tasks successfully.