Population aging and pandemics have been shown to cause the isolation of elderly people in their houses, generating the need for a reliable assistive figure. Robotic assistants are the new frontier of innovation for domestic welfare, and elderly monitoring is one of the services a robot can handle for collective well-being. Despite these emerging needs, in the actual landscape of robotic assistants, there are no platforms that successfully combine reliable mobility in cluttered domestic spaces with lightweight and offline Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for perception and interaction. In this work, we present Marvin, a novel assistive robotic platform we developed with a modular layer-based architecture, merging a flexible mechanical design with cutting-edge AI for perception and vocal control. We focus the design of Marvin on three target service functions: monitoring of elderly and reduced-mobility subjects, remote presence and connectivity, and night assistance. Compared to previous works, we propose a tiny omnidirectional platform, which enables agile mobility and effective obstacle avoidance. Moreover, we design a controllable positioning device, which easily allows the user to access the interface for connectivity and extends the visual range of the camera sensor. Nonetheless, we delicately consider the privacy issues arising from private data collection on cloud services, a critical aspect of commercial AI-based assistants. To this end, we demonstrate how lightweight deep learning solutions for visual perception and vocal command can be adopted, completely running offline on the embedded hardware of the robot.


    Access

    Download


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Marvin: An Innovative Omni-Directional Robotic Assistant for Domestic Environments



    Publication date :

    2022-01-01



    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Classification :

    DDC:    629



    Omni-directional Wheel Assembly and Omni-directional Vehicle

    European Patent Office | 2018

    Free access

    Omni-directional moving chassis and omni-directional moving equipment

    WU ZHUOZHAO / JIN YI / XU ZHIRONG et al. | European Patent Office | 2022

    Free access

    OMNI-DIRECTIONAL DRIVING WHEEL AND OMNI-DIRECTIONAL MOVABLE BODY

    TADAKUMA KENJIRO / FUJITA MASAHIRO / NOMURA HARUHITO et al. | European Patent Office | 2018

    Free access

    Omni-directional treads

    HUTSON DONALD BOLDEN | European Patent Office | 2018

    Free access

    Omni-directional forklift

    LI JINGJING / YUAN YIYUN / YE YOUDONG et al. | European Patent Office | 2020

    Free access