The Development of the Omnidirectional Mobile Home Care Robot

In the last few years, intelligent robots were successfully fielded in hospitals (King, S., and Weiman, C, 1990), museums (Burgard, W. et al., 1999), and office buildings/department stores (Endres, H. et al. , 1998), where they perform cleaning services, deliver, educate, or entertain (Schraft, R., and Schmierer, G. , 2005). Robots have also been developed for guiding blind people, as well as robotic aids for the elderly. Today, the number of elderly in need of care is increasing dramatically. As the baby-boomer generation approaches the retirement age, this number will increase significantly. Current living conditions for the majority of elderly people are already unsatisfactory, and situation will worsen in the future. (Nicholas Roy et al. , 2000) Rapid progress of standard of living and health care resulted in the increase of aging population. More and more elderly people do not receive good care from their family or caregivers. Maybe the intelligent service robots can assist people in their daily living activities. Robotics aids for the elderly have been developed, but many of these robotics aids are mechanical aids. (Song, W.-K. et al., 1998) (Dario, P. et al., 1999) (Takahashi, Y. et al., 1999). The intelligent service robot can assist elderly people with many tasks, such as remembering to take medicine or measure blood pressure on time. The main objective of this Chapter is to develop an omnidirectional mobile home care robot. This service mobile robot is equipped with “Indoor positioning system”. The indoor positioning system is used for rapid and precise positioning and guidance of the mobile robot. Five reflective infrared sensors are placed around the robot for obstacle avoidance. The wireless IP camera is placed on the top layer of this robot. Through the internet remote control system, the live image of the IP camera on the robot can be transferred to the remote client user. With this internet remote control system, the remote client user can monitor the elderly people or the home security condition. On the aid of this system, remote family member can control the robot and talk to the elderly. This intelligent robot also can deliver the medicine or remind to measure the blood pressure or blood sugar on time. We hope this intelligent robot can be a housekeeper or family guard to protect our elderly people or our family. The functions of the proposed robot are illustrated as follows:  deliver medicine or food on time  remind to measure and record the blood pressure or blood sugar of the elderly on time