Development of a human-assist robotic system using distributed computing technology

The population-aging problem is increasingly pressing the society. Thus, developing supporting system to improve care cost and the QoL of these elderly people is becoming particularly and timely important. Because of the dispersal of the elderly and disabled, a standard software sharing and improve the cost of writing and maintaining software is highly demanded. This paper proposes using distributing computing technology CORBA as communication architecture to integrate network distributed software and robotic systems to implement support system for the aged or disabled. Using CORBA as a communication architecture, we developed hardware base, user management server, task-level robot arm control server, live image feedback server, mobile robot control server and iGPS server, which can provide some basic care services to aid the aged and disabled. The developed system has the potential to improve the QoL of the aged or disabled and care cost in the future population-aging society.