Gaze-Foot Hybrid Upper Limb Assistive Robotic System: An Innovative Approach to Aid Individuals with Limb Impairments

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Assistive Technology

Background:

• Individuals with hemiparesis often require assistive robotic systems for daily tasks.
• Eye-gaze control offers intuitive human-robot interaction but faces limitations in grasping.
• Existing gaze-based systems need improvement for effective assistive grasping.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design an assistive robotic system that overcomes limitations in gaze-based control.
• To enable natural and intuitive control of assistive robots for grasping tasks.
• To integrate gaze and foot signals for enhanced robotic assistance.

Main Methods:

• Developed a gaze-foot hybrid upper limb assistive robotic system.
• Integrated gaze-based intention recognition and foot pose-based orientation control.
• Utilized object detection and localization for task execution in daily activities.

Main Results:

• Achieved high success rates in assistive grasping (95.83%) and cooperative tasks (94.00%).
• Demonstrated quantitative advantages of the hybrid system over comparative methods.
• System Usability Scale assessment confirmed user-friendliness and ease of learning.

Conclusions:

• The developed assistive system effectively aids users in completing grasping tasks.
• The system provides an intuitive and user-friendly approach to robotic assistance.
• This novel control strategy has potential applications in other robotic interaction systems.