Distributed telecare robotic systems using CORBA as a communication architecture

Because the elderly population is growing while the number of people to take care of them is declining, the aging problem is becoming an increasingly important social issue. Thus, developing an inexpensive support system for these elderly people staying alone at home or small-scale distributed facilities is becoming particularly important. The paper proposes a basic platform design of a network distributed telecare robotic systems using CORBA as communication architecture, which has high scaling and inter-operating ability that allows the different support groups to make their own independent computing decisions to develop their applications. It also has remote accessibility for caregivers, and the other helpers from any location where a Web browser is available. Using the developed platform, we implemented a task-level robot arm server, a mobile robot control server, and a live image feedback server, which realized some basic telecare services for the aged and disabled.