Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In this regard, even at an intermediate stage of the E
X
CITE project, some general com-
ments can be derived from such an experience.
Specifically, in our work of fielding the telepresence robot in operational contexts
in Italy, we gathered incremental evidence that situations exist in which some techni-
cal advancements usually connected with autonomous behavior can dramatically af-
fect the efforts required in deploying the robot in older people living environment.
And, most importantly, they also enhance the interactions through the MRP robot as
well as increase the robustness of the whole system in an application area where frail
users are involved. Indeed, such advancements can be related to human-robot interac-
tion factors [23]: (a) the
system effectiveness
, the quality of interactions related with
the robot capability of performing some tasks autonomously; (b) the
system efficiency
,
the amount of time spent in order to complete some instrumental robot activities; (c) the
operator workload
, the cognitive burden required to the operator while controlling the
MRP robot; (d) the
robot self-awareness
, the capacity of the robot to assess its own
status; (e) the
robot human-awareness
, the degree of which the robot is aware of human
presence in the environment. Then, from the client users' view, even a limited set of
autonomous behaviors can increase their projection capability and achieve a safe and
reliable operation of the telepresence robot in a (potentially) dynamic environment [24].
4.1
Gaining Robustness by Introducing Autonomous Capabilities
In this subsection, we present some contextualized use cases for autonomous capabili-
ties that have emerged from our experience.
Autonomous Navigation.
A quite common situation in Mediterranean countries is re-
lated to the small size of apartments where old people live. In fact, the G
IRAFF
robot
is currenlty being installed and operated also in domestic places of very limited size.
This entails that even skilled client users may have difficulties in controlling the robot
within such small environments. Therefore, the system should be equipped with navi-
gation abilities to safely guide the telepresence robot to some specific home locations
requested by the operator. For instance, the operator may request the MRP to reach
the kitchen in the apartment so that she can visually check the status of the stoves. In
this respect, the autonomous navigation capabilities would clearly enhance both sys-
tem effectiveness and efficiency thus lowering the operator workload during the overall
interaction.
Docking.
While deploying the robot at home, a crucial location emerged to be the
position of the
docking station
used to recharge the batteries of the robot and park it
while idle. In fact, since the robot must not be left out of the docking station without
control, this is the most important location that the robot should always be able to
reach. The robot should also be aware of the status of its battery (increased robot self-
awareness) and, whenever the level is below a given threshold, it should automatically
reach the docking station. Indeed, the return to the docking station is considered the
aspect that requires synthesis of new solutions. In this case, an autonomous docking
capability would surely lower the time spent in performing an instrumental activity.
