Development of user interface with single switch scanning for robot arm to help disabled people using RT-Middleware

We are developing a manipulator system in order to support disabled people with less muscle strength such as muscular dystrophy patients. Such a manipulator should have an easy interface for the users to control it. In this paper, we report on the construction of the user interface of the system using RT-middleware. RT-middleware is an open software platform for robot systems. Therefore other interface components or robot components which are adapted to other symptoms can be replaced with the interface without any change of the contents. A single switch is introduced as the input device for the manual control of the robot arm in our interface. The scanning menu panel is designed to perform various actions of the robot arm with the single switch. A manipulator simulation system was constructed to evaluate the input performance. Two muscular dystrophy patients tried of our interface to control the robot simulator and made comments.