A Steward Robot to Help Daily Activities in a Smart House Environment

Independence of the people in need in their activities of daily living becomes a matter of vital importance to any society in the years to come. As an approach to achieve independence, this paper addresses the problem of controlling assistive home environment emphasizing human-friendly human-machine interaction. To provide inhabitants with easily accessible, convenient, and cost-effective environment for independent living, we introduce a new service robot categorized into a steward robot as an intermediate agent between inhabitants and complex smart house environment. The learning capability and emotional interaction of the robot can enhance human-friendliness in various tasks. A learning system enables the robot to provide customized services by accumulating knowledge of the user’s behavior patterns in daily activities. An emotional interaction system generates facial expressions to communicate with the user in a human-friendly manner. We have developed two types of steward robots: a software type to use everywhere by personal computing devices such as a PDA and a cellular phone, and a hardware type to provide tangible services with physical interaction by two robotic arms and a mobile base.