Whole - Body

2 JUNE 2015 I n [Fingar, 2008], the US National Intelligence Council reported six potentially disruptive technologies for the year 2025, one of them being service robotics. The report states that, “[...] robots for elder care applications and the development of human augmentation technologies, mean that robots could be working alongside humans in looking after and rehabilitating people.” On a related note, the European company Fatronik published a study [Eizmendi, 2007] showing that by age 80, 42% of the Spanish population is currently disabled. Looking at population pyramids and expected population growth, we could expect that by the year 2100, more than 1 billion people will be disabled worldwide. It is in light of those statistics that service robotics may play a major role in providing life comfort after losing mobility. In this context, the Human Centered Robotics Lab (HCRL) at the University of Texas at Austin is interested in the study of robotic systems for the assistance, augmentation, and representation of people to increase their social comfort, productivity, security and health.