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An assistive robotic agent for pedestrian mobility

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Published:28 May 2001Publication History

ABSTRACT

The goal of this project is to develop a pedestrian mobility aid for the elderly. In order for this type of assistive technology to be useful and accepted by its intended user community, it must enhance the abilities of users, not replace them. This leads to an agent architecture in which the agent must operate without hindering the user's ability to take direct action when they choose. In other words, the agent cannot simply be a proxy for the user's actions. The agent must select its own goals based on observations of its users actions. This is crucial not only because users may have diminished capacity to explain their actions to an agent, but because the ability of the agent to correctly interpret the user's goals is tied to its ability to act while still allowing the user to “feel in control”. We present a mobility aid, i. e. a wheeled walker, which varies its goals and level of activity based on an estimation of its user's intentions. The assistive agent often takes no action, allowing the user to be fully in control. When the ease or safety of the users travel is threatened, the agent attempts to influence the users motion based on its belief in the users goal. By varying the degree of autonomy, the walker can adjust to the user as their abilities change from day to day, or hour to hour. This prevents the walker from trying to do too much, allowing the user to feel as if they are in control and not being lead.

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                  • Published in

                    cover image ACM Conferences
                    AGENTS '01: Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Autonomous agents
                    May 2001
                    662 pages
                    ISBN:158113326X
                    DOI:10.1145/375735

                    Copyright © 2001 ACM

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                    Publication History

                    • Published: 28 May 2001

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                    AGENTS '01 Paper Acceptance Rate66of248submissions,27%Overall Acceptance Rate182of599submissions,30%

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