Mobile robot system to aid the daily life for bedridden persons

The number of old-aged people in the population is increasing in Japan, the problem of caring for bedridden patients will increasingly become a social problem. We are trying to solve this problem by developing a small mobile robot system for bedridden patients. The purpose of this system is to pick up and place a small object somewhere inside the room semi-automatically. This mobile robot consists of a manipulator, visual sensor unit and mobile unit. This system gives information about the surrounding to the patient through the camera and monitor. When the patient directs a target object on the monitor, the system measures the 3-dimensional location of it, the mobile unit then approaches the object and the manipulator picks it up and carries it back to the patient. This system is controlled by the image information and also by the human operator (the patient) through an image based interface