A Robot That Autonomously Feeds Users with Mobility Disabilities
You may not realize quite how complex the eating process is, but it’s something that people with many kinds of mobility disabilities can’t take for granted. Many people are unable to feed themselves, and have to rely on a caretaker for assistance. Not only is that costly, it also reduces a person’s independence and overall quality of life. That’s why researchers have created a robot that can autonomously feed someone directly from their wheelchair.
The Autonomous Robot Feeding with Assistive Dexterous Arm (ADA) project is the work of researchers from the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering Personal Robotics Lab. It was designed specifically to increase the independence of people with disabilities by giving them the ability to eat on their own. However, the seemingly simple act of feeding actually poses quite the challenge for a robot.
The robot arm, which is mounted to the user’s wheelchair, needs to understand a lot about the task at hand and how to safely move food from a plate to the user’s mouth. That process starts with computer vision, which is used to identify the food. The system then has to decide how best to pick it up. A piece of food like a celery stick, for example, should be picked up with the fork at one end and not the center.
After picking up the food, the robot also needs to know how to move it close to the user’s mouth without dropping it or running into an obstacle. Once the food is near the user’s mouth, more computer vision is used to determine when they’ve opened their mouth and are ready to eat it. The robot then safely places the food in their mouth and withdraws. It’s a complex system, but one which could significantly improve the quality of many people’s lives.
