• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.202-209
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• 2003

We succeeded to build a cost effective assistance robotic arm with a compact and lightweight body. The robotic arm has three joints, and the tip of robotic arm to install tools consists of a closed link mechanism, which consisted of two actuators and several links. The robotic arm has been made possible by the use of actuators typically used in radio control devices. The controller of the robotic arm consists of a single chip PIC only. The robotic arm has a friendly user interface, as the operators are aged and disabled in most cases. The operator can manipulate the robotic arm by voice commands or by pressing a push button. The robotic arm has been successfully prototyped and tested on an elderly patient to assist with eating. The results of field test were satisfactory.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.957-962
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• 2005

Today, the elderly is increasing gradually in the Republic of Korea society and this problem will be more serious in the near future. Therefore, engineering support for aged people is required. We are establishing a new field of healthcare engineering for elderly people and aiming to support for aged people and disabled people using adaptive control and instrument technology. In this paper, the goal is to implement the shared control of a robot mobility aid for the elderly. As using this type of assistive technology to be useful by its intended user community, it supports elderly people and handicapped people to live independently in their private homes. The interface transforms the force applied by the user into the robot's motion. Devices like buttons, joysticks, and levers already exist for relaying user input; however, they require hand displacement that would loosen or otherwise release the user's hold. Such interfaces make operation very difficult and potentially unsafe. Therefore, we propose a shared control system. It's safe more than joysticks and buttons. The shared control is a means of registering the user's intention through physical interaction. It's an important component in the development of robotic elderly assistant. The concept of shared control describes a system which is two or more independent control systems. We are using that the three component blocks consist of pressure sensor (flexible force sensor), circuit of measurement and transfer function. Experimental trials of this paper have been tested at the indoor environment. The robot is able to know the user intended direction through haptic device were logged along with the robot's force sensor.

• Transactions on Control, Automation and Systems Engineering
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.229-235
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• 2001

Recently, service area has been emerging field f robotic applications. Even though assistant robots play an important role for the disabled and the elderly, they still suffer from operating the robots using conventional interface devices such as joysticks or keyboards. In this paper we propose an efficient computer interface using real-time eye-gaze tracking system. The inputs to the proposed system are images taken by a camera and data from a magnetic sensor. The measured data is sufficient to describe the eye and head movement because the camera and the receiver of a magnetic sensor are stationary with respect to the head. So the proposed system can obtain the eye-gaze direction in spite of head movement as long as the distance between the system and the transmitter of a magnetic position sensor is within 2m. Experimental results show the validity of the proposed system in practical aspect and also verify the feasibility of the system as a new computer interface for the disabled.