NRI: Collaborative Research: ASPIRE: Automation Supporting Prolonged Independent Residence for the Elderly

NRI：合作研究：ASPIRE：自动化支持老年人长期独立居住

• 批准号: 1525900
• 负责人: Xiaofeng Wang
• 金额: $ 20.33万
• 依托单位: University of South Carolina at Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1525900&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NRI; Collaborative; Research; ASPIRE; Automation

Because of the graying of the population, there is a growing need for new assistive technologies to aid the elderly in their daily living. Based on figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, and due largely to the aging of the "baby boomer" generation, the population of U.S. adults who are 65 and older is projected to be twice as large in 2030 as it was in 2000, increasing from 35 million to 71.5 million and representing nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. population. This trend is placing enormous burdens on health care costs and causing disruptive changes to how individuals and families manage key late-in-life decisions, including residence. A recent (2015) report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded that most seniors would prefer to age in place, and a 2010 survey found that 88% of respondents over 65 preferred to remain in their homes as long as possible. It is important to note that these residential preferences must typically be viewed in light of alternatives that are likely to be much more expensive and/or more socially taxing, such as older adults living instead in hospitals, assistive living facilities or with family members. While estimates of the costs associated with these trends vary greatly, it is almost certain that extending the portions of older adults' life spans in which they can live safely and independently through technological means could have enormous positive societal impact. In order to assist in successful aging in place, assistive robots have been developed in the past few decades. However, very few of them have become commercially available, and their use in domesticated environments remains highly limited. The major cause of the problem is that assistive robots typically take the form of full-size humanoid devices or something equally as cumbersome, expensive, and limited in movement and function. We propose a novel assistive robotic system that provides: (i) flexibility, allowing the designed system to be personalized based on users' needs without demanding any home modification upon installation; (ii) safety, ensuring that the system development process accounts for perceived safety by the user, and that the underlying theoretical framework guarantees collision avoidance; (iii) usability, consisting of a minimal and intuitive user interface to provide acceptable controls; (iv) reduced costs, with respect to currently available solutions on the market. The idea behind this research project is the development of a general framework that enables a team of unmanned ground vehicles and small multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles to safely cooperate with the elderly in a home environment. Equipped with appropriate human-machine interfaces, the co-robots will be able to accomplish a number of tasks as demanded by the users. The project addresses fundamental problems in the domain of multi-agent cooperative systems, comprised of humans and co-robots interacting in shared, highly constrained spaces. In order to assist humans, the co-robots have to be trusted by humans, implying that their behaviors be predictable and consistent with principles of human spatial perception, and their appearance must foster a high level of comfort and not create high cognitive demands on the user. Inspired by these challenges, this proposal focuses on the design and control of co-robots, which can adapt to unstructured and rapidly changing environments in a manner consistent with human perception and cognition, thus enhancing safety and robustness. The key focus areas include the design and acceptance of mobile ground and aerial robots that coexist in environments inhabited by humans and the development of a multi-objective control framework to allow intuitive user control over an ensemble of co-robots, which includes the design of both low-level controllers (LLC) and a supervisory, high-level controller (HLC). To demonstrate the benefits of the framework and to engage student groups from various, diverse populations, the following scenario will be considered as a test case: multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles and ground robots acting as domestic assistive devices for healthy older adults in a research laboratory. These co-robots will safely navigate the shared space and accomplish domestic tasks requested by humans while displaying behaviors and appearances that are perceived as safe and trusted. Humans will use an intuitively designed interface for both controlling and monitoring co-robots on a tablet or a smartphone device. A motion capture system and virtual reality Cube at the Beckman Institute will provide the context for data collection, iterative testing and validation.

由于人口的灰色，新辅助技术的需求越来越多，以帮助老年人的日常生活。根据美国人口普查局提供的数字，并且主要是由于“婴儿潮一代”一代的老化，预计65岁及65岁以上的美国成年人的人口在2030年的两倍是2000年的两倍，从3500万增加到7150万，占美国总人群的近20％。这种趋势是给医疗保健成本带来巨大负担，并对个人和家庭如何管理包括居住在内的关键后期决策造成破坏性变化。美国住房和城市发展部最近的一份（2015年）的报告得出结论，大多数老年人都希望已经衰老了，2010年的一项调查发现，有88％的受访者超过65名，更喜欢尽可能长时间留在他们的家中。重要的是要注意，通常必须根据可能更昂贵和/或更高社会征税的替代品，例如居住在医院，辅助生活设施或与家人的替代品来查看这些住宅偏好。尽管与这些趋势相关的成本的估计差异很大，但几乎可以肯定的是，扩大老年人生活的部分范围，他们可以通过技术手段安全地独立生活，可能会对社会产生巨大的积极影响。为了协助成功的衰老，在过去的几十年中已经开发了辅助机器人。但是，其中很少有商业可用，并且它们在驯养环境中的使用仍然很受限制。该问题的主要原因是辅助机器人通常采用全尺寸类人动物设备的形式，或者同样笨拙，昂贵且运动和功能有限。我们提出了一个新颖的辅助机器人系统，该系统提供：（i）灵活性，允许设计系统根据用户的需求进行个性化，而无需安装时进行任何家庭修改； （ii）安全性，确保系统开发过程解释了用户感知的安全性，并且基本的理论框架可以保证避免碰撞； （iii）可用性，由最小和直观的用户界面组成，可提供可接受的控件； （iv）关于市场上当前可用的解决方案的成本降低。该研究项目背后的想法是开发一个通用框架，该框架使一组无人的地面车辆和小型多摩托车无人驾驶飞机能够在家庭环境中安全与老年人合作。配备了适当的人机接口，共同机器人将能够按照用户要求完成许多任务。该项目解决了由人类和共享高度约束空间相互作用的人类和共同机器人组成的多机构合作系统领域的基本问题。为了协助人类，人类必须信任共同机器人，这意味着他们的行为是可预测的，并且与人类空间感知的原则一致，并且它们的外观必须促进高水平的舒适度，并且不要对用户产生高认知需求。受这些挑战的启发，该提案的重点是共同机器人的设计和控制，这些挑战可以以与人类的感知和认知一致的方式适应非结构​​化和快速变化的环境，从而增强了安全性和稳健性。关键重点领域包括在人类居住在环境中共存的移动地面和空中机器人的设计和接受以及开发多目标控制框架，以允许直观的用户控制共同驾驶的集合，其中包括低级别控制器（LLC）（LLC）和a Ausperisory，Austerisory a Persiverisory，Aperisory，高级控制器（HLC）。为了证明框架的好处并吸引来自各种不同人群的学生群体，以下情况将被视为测试案例：多动物无人驾驶飞机和地面机器人，在研究实验室中充当健康老年人的家庭辅助设备。这些共同机器人将安全地浏览共享空间，并完成人类要求的家庭任务，同时显示被认为是安全和可信赖的行为和外观。人类将使用直观设计的界面来控制平板电脑或智能手机设备上的共同机器人。贝克曼学院（Beckman Institute）的运动捕获系统和虚拟现实立方体将为数据收集，迭代测试和验证提供背景。

项目成果

Lebesgue-Approximation-Based Model Predictive Control for Nonlinear Sampled-Data Systems with Measurement Noises

具有测量噪声的非线性采样数据系统的基于勒贝格近似的模型预测控制

• DOI: 10.23919/acc.2018.8431194
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: American Control Conference
• 作者: Yang, Lixing;Wang, Xiaofeng
• 通讯作者: Wang, Xiaofeng