Handicapped assisting robot

This article presents the Robotic system which was developed at the University of Bermen´s Institute of Automation (IAT). This system offers increased control functionality for the disabled users. This robot consists of an electric wheel-chair, equipped with the robot arm MANUS. A computer controls both the devices the man-machine interface (MMI) consists of a flat screen and a speech interface. Friend´s hardware and software are described and the current state of development is then presented, as well as research results that will be integrated soon. After a short explanation of speech interface, the methods developed for semiautonomous control are described. These are programmed by demonstration, visual serving and configuration planning based on the method of imaginary links. We also described the state of integration and our experience to date.