Ambient intelligence and rehabilitation robots — A necessary symbiosis for robust operation in unstructured environments

In this paper we will consider robots that are designed to support disabled people with quadriplegia. The patients are paralysed e.g. due to a spinal cord injury (SCI) at vertebrae c4 or above and depend all day from care persons. Robots like the care giving robot FRIEND will only be accepted by users if they provide them with independence from personal care persons for considerable time periods over the day in as many situations as possible and if the user can rely on the robot. Robot control must be very reliable and robust against many variations in environment. For robust behaviour, it is necessary to provide the robot control system with additional information from the environment. This information can be generated by a sensor at the robot or by smart environmental systems, which are equipped with additional sensors and actor elements that are used to support the robot system in difficult tasks. In this paper, ambient intelligence is especially considered to support action sequences of the robot and provide redundancy to the robot control system.