Meal assistance robots: A review on current status, challenges and future directions

Need of assistive robots for performing activities of daily living is increasing with the reduction of labor force in the welfare and nursing care. Self-feeding or eating is one of the primary activities of a human in his/her daily life. Devices such as assistive robots for self-feeding have been developed as a solution for this problem. The purpose of this paper is to review existing meal assistance robots. In the paper, identification of important design features like feeding techniques, advantages and limitations of control methods of meal assistance robots and different inputs signals are comprehensively discussed. Challenges for developing meal assistance robots and potential future directions are also discussed at the end.