Kenji Matsukuma

An autonomous mobile robot for carrying food trays to the aged and disabled

This paper describes the configuration of the total robot system and the component technologies, and explains the results from both a technical performance test and practical evaluation test. The goal of the project is to reduce the workload on nurses and care providers at mealtime by developing an autonomous mobile robot that carries food trays to the aged and disabled. After conducting practical evaluation tests in actual care facilities where difficult problems related to the surrounding conditions remain to be solved, it was demonstrated that introducing the use of robot to care facilities is realizable. For practical use, the robot should be further developed to enable highly efficient operation and to perform consecutive actions, comparable to human behavior. In addition, many kinds of user-interfaces for autonomous interaction with the aged should be provided for simple and quick recovery in any unforeseen event. Finally, production costs should be lowered. Planning is also going on to market the robot in the near future by improving its quality and performance based on the practical evaluation tests.