This book deals with the growing challenges of using assistive robots in our everyday activities along with providing intelligent assistive services. The presented applications concern mainly healthcare and wellness such as helping elderly people, assisting dependent persons, habitat monitoring in smart environments, well-being, security, etc. These applications reveal also new challenges regarding control theory, mechanical design, mechatronics, portability, acceptability, scalability, security, etc.

This book constitutes a carefully arranged selection of revised papers on assistive technology, first presented at related AAAI workshops between 1995 and 1998. The book is devoted to the advancement and use of AI stimulated technology that can help users extend their current range of cognitive and sensory abilities or overcome their motor disabilities. Among various issues in the interdisciplinary area of assistive technology, the papers address topics from natural language processing, planning, robotics, user interface design, computer vision, and learning.

The increasingly widespread implementation and use of intelligent assistive technologies (IATs) is reshaping dementia care. This volume provides an up-to-date overview of the current state of IATs for dementia care. The new essays collected here examine what IATs will mean for clinical practice and the ethical and regulatory challenges they will pose.

This book contains a comprehensive overview of all current uses of robots in rehabilitation. The underlying principles in each application are provided. This is followed by a critical review of the technology available, of the utilization protocols, and of user studies, outcomes, and clinical evidence, if existing. Ethical and social implications of robot use are also discussed. The reader will have an in depth view of rehabilitation robots, from principles to practice.

Assistive robots are categorized as robots that share their area of work and interact with humans. Their main goals are to help, assist, and monitor humans, especially people with disabilities. To achieve these goals, it is necessary that these robots possess a series of characteristics, namely the abilities to perceive their environment from their sensors and act consequently, to interact with people in a multimodal manner, and to navigate and make decisions autonomously. This complexity demands computationally expensive algorithms to be performed in real time. The advent of high-end embedded processors has enabled several such algorithms to be processed concurrently and in real time. All these capabilities involve, to a greater or less extent, the use of machine learning techniques. In particular, in the last few years, new deep learning techniques have enabled a very important qualitative leap in different problems related to perception, navigation, and human understanding. In this Special Issue, several works are presented involving the use of machine learning techniques for assistive technologies, in particular for assistive robots.

This book presents the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2016 held in Belgrade, Serbia, on June 30th–July 2nd, 2016. In keeping with the tradition of the event, RAAD 2016 covered all the important areas of research and innovation in new robot designs and intelligent robot control, with papers including Intelligent robot motion control; Robot vision and sensory processing; Novel design of robot manipulators and grippers; Robot applications in manufacturing and services; Autonomous systems, humanoid and walking robots; Human–robot interaction and collaboration; Cognitive robots and emotional intelligence; Medical, human-assistive robots and prosthetic design; Robots in construction and arts, and Evolution, education, legal and social issues of robotics. For the first time in RAAD history, the themes cloud robots, legal and ethical issues in robotics as well as robots in arts were included in the technical program. The book is a valuable resource for researchers in fields of robotics, engineers who implement robotic solutions in manufacturing, services and healthcare, and master’s and Ph.D. students working on robotics projects.

In nowadays aging society, many people require mobility assistance. Sometimes, assistive devices need a certain degree of autonomy when users' disabilities difficult manual control. However, clinicians report that excessive assistance may lead to loss of residual skills and frustration. Shared control focuses on deciding when users need help and providing it. Collaborative control aims at giving just the right amount of help in a transparent, seamless way. This book presents the collaborative control paradigm. User performance may be indicative of physical/cognitive condition, so it is used to decide how much help is needed. Besides, collaborative control integrates machine and user commands so that people contribute to self-motion at all times. Collaborative control was extensively tested for 3 years using a robotized wheelchair at a rehabilitation hospital in Rome with volunteer inpatients presenting different disabilities, ranging from mild to severe. We also present a taxonomy of common metrics for wheelchair navigation and tests are evaluated accordingly. Obtained results are coherent both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view.