MORPHeus: A Multimodal One-Armed Robot-Assisted Peeling System with Human Users In-The-Loop

Meal preparation is an important instrumental activity of daily living (IADL). While existing research has explored robotic assistance in meal preparation tasks like cutting and cooking, the crucial task of peeling has received less attention. Peeling, conventionally a bimanual task, is challenging for care recipients using one robot arm mounted on their wheelchair due to ergonomic and transferring challenges. This paper introduces a real-world robot-assisted peeling system utilizing a single robotic arm and an assistive cutting board, inspired by how individuals with one functional hand do meal preparation. Our system incorporates a multimodal active perception module, a human-in-the-loop long-horizon planning through a natural language interface, and a compliant controller for adaptive motion. Our robot-assisted peeling system uses visual, haptic, and vibration sensing modalities to peel a diverse range of food items with varying physical properties and can successfully adapt to different environments featuring multiple specialized cutting boards. Videos and supplementary materials are available at https://emprise.cs.cornell.edu/morpheus/.