Intelligent Powered Mobility For Special Needs Children
Our current mobile robot prototype(the “UD1”) uses a commercialrobot, adapted to seat an infant with a joystick. The UD1 is equipped with an on-board computer, odometry torecord its movements, an array of sensors on its periphery to determine the obstacle-free area around it, and a wirelesscommunication link to a host computer to continuously transfer position data. Using joysticks, UD1 can be either manually drivenby the infant or a caregiver. In addition, usingin-house developed intelligent software, it can be autonomously orsemi-autonomously driven safely while avoiding obstacles. Our current datacollection with UD1 only utilizes the manual drive capability of the robot. Ournext generation prototypes will have additional capabilities to enhance training and assessmentof infant learning, such as: (i) Semi-autonomous navigation of the robot torespond to infant joystick commands and obstacles in the environment, (ii)Development of a force-field joystick to train an infant to navigate within acluttered environment, (iii) “Virtual leash” to allow the robot to autonomouslyfollow a parent within a selected leash radius while navigating in an indoor oroutdoor environment.
United States
Patent Published
美国
