Facilitating Human Interaction with Robot Exercise Coach using Smart Objects

During winter 2019, I got a wonderful opportunity to work at

MPI-IS under the supervision of

Prof. Katherine Kuchenbecker , her PhD student

Mayumi Mohan and research scientist

Adam Spiers in the field of social-physical human-robot interaction.

Prior research has shown the potential of social robots in motivating older adults to exercise. We aim to contribute towards such a platform by facilitating users to interact with a bimanual humanoid robot (Rethink Robotics Baxter) through smart objects that trigger specific robot behaviors.

Smart objects in this scope refers to any engineered device capable of facilitating dynamic social or physical interaction between a human and the robot while generating relevant data about the activity.

During my stay at MPI-IS, I focussed on designing these smart objects and their interactions with a human as well the robot. I got a thorough learning experience in the areas of communication systems, RFID systems, embedded systems, prototyping, and Robot Operating System (ROS).

This is an ongoing project and we are looking forward to continuing this research via a clinical collaboration. With expert guidance, we will be able to address more specific use cases of the system we developed. After refinement of our current system and further additions to the current design, we plan to run a user study to assess our system’s performance. If you would like to have more details, feel free to drop an email.