Håkan Eftring

Robotics in rehabilitation

Robotics in rehabilitation provide considerable opportunities to improve the quality of life for physically disabled people. However, practical results are limited, mainly due to the need for developing new robotics concepts where people are working together with robots, as opposed to industrial robots where they are working in separated areas. The authors reveal some of the developments needed and present two projects currently underway at Lund University. The first one is concerned with end-effector design for a robotic workstation for office-based tasks, while the second is concerned with a mobile robotic system for use in medical and chemical laboratories by disabled people. Both projects show promising results. There is also a need for further research in developing new robotic systems for use in rehabilitation with new mechanical features, as well as programming and control suitable for any user. >

AHEAD - Audio-Haptic Drawing Editor And Explorer for Education

We present the final evaluation of an audio-haptic editor and explorer for virtual 2D relief drawings that allow visually impaired users to create and explore graphical images. The application has been developed in collaboration with a user reference group of five blind/low vision school children, and has undergone final evaluation during spring in 2007. The AHEAD application has been used to create material that has been successfully used in school work.

Bringing the mobile context into industrial design and development

In this paper we discuss the dynamic nature of mobile usage, and how this impacts on design and evaluation, particularly in an industrial setting. We argue that current industry oriented design tools need to be extended to cater more effectively to the highly dynamic and context-dependent nature of mobile usage -- we suggest more focus should be put on doing instead of on being. In order to achieve this we suggest a lightweight design/insight tool developed to suit industrial practice: context cards. These cards allow designers, developers, and usability experts to perform lightweight explorations of the consequences of a range of mobile situations.

Case report : Implications of Doing Research on Socially Assistive Robots in real Homes

The current paper addresses the implications of doing research on socially assistive robots in real homes. In contrast to laboratory studies, studies of robots in their intended natural environments can provide insights into people’s experiences of robots, and if and how a robot becomes embedded and used in people’s everyday life. However, moving robots out of the lab and into real life environments poses several challenges. Laboratory methods mainly focus on cause-and-effect relations between independent and dependent variables, while researchers who are conducting studies in real homes have much less control. In home trials, researchers need to decide what kind of data is obtainable and available. In real homes, researchers face unique challenges that require unique and pragmatic approaches. Any single study conducted in a real home is likely to have methodological limitations. Therefore, several different studies using different robots and methods are needed before the results can be converged in order to reach conclusions that are convincingly supported. This paper is an effort to provide such a report on a specific empirical case and converging findings from other studies. The goal is to provide an account of the research challenges and opportunities encountered when introducing a robot into its intended practice: the homes of older people. The aim is to give enough details for other researchers to critically examine and systematically build on the insights and findings presented.

Capturing seniors' requirements for assistive robots by the use of attention cards

This paper describes and reflects upon a senior-oriented participatory design methodology that facilitates communication, attention and creativity. Previous research indicates that seniors tend to lose focus and start cross talking during workshops, which results in broad and superficial findings. However, our workshop methodology indicates that the use of attention cards helps the seniors to stay focused by visualizing concrete first person narrative scenarios. This paper does not describe the findings of the workshop. Instead, we use our experience to propose ways in which the process of eliciting user requirements for novel technologies from old users with no prior experience of the technology in question can be made.

Robot control methods using the RAID workstation

CERTEC intends to develop an autonomous grasping function, making it easier for physical disabled people to control robots, but first user requirements have to be studied.

Hobbit: Providing Fall Detection and Prevention for the Elderly in the Real World

We present the robot developed within the Hobbit project, a socially assistive service robot aiming at the challenge of enabling prolonged independent living of elderly people in their own homes. We present the second prototype (Hobbit PT2) in terms of hardware and functionality improvements following first user studies. Our main contribution lies within the description of all components developed within the Hobbit project, leading to autonomous operation of 371 days during field trials in Austria, Greece, and Sweden. In these field trials, we studied how 18 elderly users (aged 75 years and older) lived with the autonomously interacting service robot over multiple weeks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a multifunctional, low-cost service robot equipped with a manipulator was studied and evaluated for several weeks under real-world conditions. We show that Hobbit’s adaptive approach towards the user increasingly eased the interaction between the users and Hobbit. We provide lessons learned regarding the need for adaptive behavior coordination, support during emergency situations, and clear communication of robotic actions and their consequences for fellow researchers who are developing an autonomous, low-cost service robot designed to interact with their users in domestic contexts. Our trials show the necessity to move out into actual user homes, as only there can we encounter issues such as misinterpretation of actions during unscripted human-robot interaction.

Using attention cards to facilitate active participation in eliciting old adults' requirements for assistive robots

Engaging old users in the exploration of future product concepts can be challenging. It is of great value to find ways to actively involve them in the design of novel technologies intended for them, particularly when they have no prior experience of the technology in question. One obstacle in this process is that many old people do not identify themselves as being old or they think that it (the technology) would be good for others but not themselves. This paper presents a card method to overcome this obstacle. A full-day workshop with three internal focus groups was run with 14 participants. Based on our experience, we propose a way in which active participation in the process of eliciting user requirements for assistive robots from old users with no prior experience of assistive robots can be carried out.