Development of Smartphone-Based Human-Robot Interfaces for Individuals With Disabilities

Persons with disabilities often rely on caregivers or family members to assist in their daily living activities. Robotic assistants can provide an alternative solution if intuitive user interfaces are designed for simple operations. Current human-robot interfaces are still far from being able to operate in an intuitive way when used for complex activities of daily living (ADL). In this era of smartphones that are packed with sensors, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and a precise touch screen, robot controls can be interfaced with smartphones to capture the user's intended operation of the robot assistant. In this letter, we review the current popular human-robot interfaces, and we present three novel human-robot smartphone-based interfaces to operate a robotic arm for assisting persons with disabilities in their ADL tasks. Useful smartphone data, including 3 dimensional orientation and 2 dimensional touchscreen positions, are used as control variables to the robot motion in Cartesian teleoperation. In this letter, we present the three control interfaces, their implementation on a smartphone to control a robotic arm, and a comparison between the results on using the three interfaces for three different ADL tasks. The developed interfaces provide intuitiveness, low cost, and environmental adaptability.