An Acceptance Test for Assistive Robots

Controls for Assistive Robots

Turning Assistive Machines into Assistive Robots

For decades, the potential for automation—in particular, in the form of smart wheelchairs—to aid those with motor, or cognitive, impairments has been recognized. It is a paradox that often the more severe a person’s motor impairment, the more challenging it is for them to operate the very assistive machines which might enhance their quality of life. A primary aim of my lab is to address this co...

Sparse control for high-DOF assistive robots

Human control of high degree-of-freedom robotic systems can often be difficult due to a sparse control problem. This problem relates to the disparity in the amount of information required by the robot’s control variables and the relatively small volume of information a human can specify. To address the sparse control problem, we propose the use of subspaces embedded within the pose space of a r...

Efficient Natural Language Interfaces for Assistive Robots

Language is a powerful tool that enables humans and robots to interact without the need for complex graphical interfaces. Statistical techniques for interpreting the meaning of utterances in complex domestic environments, however, remain computationally intensive and are prone to error. Herein we present a model for language understanding that uses parse trees and environment models to infer bo...

Retrofitting an Acceptance Test Framework for Clarity

An XP customer needs to write and check acceptance tests. However, the format for defining the tests needs to be clear. Many acceptance test approaches use arcane formats which do not promote clarity for the customer, due to a conflict of interest between the complexities of automation and the needs of the customer. We discuss the evolution of acceptance tests to improve their clarity for the c...