Microsoft Research Embedded Systems Invitation for Proposal Mobile robots and appliances to support the elderly people Luca Iocchi, Daniele Nardi Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica Università di Roma "La Sapienza" Via Salaria 113, 00198 ROMA, Italy Phone : +39-06-49918330, Fax : +39-06-85300849 Web : http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~{iocchi,nardi} E-mail : {iocchi,nardi}@dis.uniroma1.it Abstract The present research proposal is focussed on the development of a system composed by mobile robots and intelligent devices developed with the objective of supporting elderly people. The main objective of this research is to develop a software infrastructure based on Microsoft Embedded Systems for programming mobile robots and appliances to be used as tools for helping elderly people in a health-care house. Motivation and Background The present research proposal is focussed on the development of a system composed by mobile robots and intelligent devices developed with the objective of supporting elderly people. The background of this research is in a research project that we are currently carrying on (funded by Italian National Research Council), whose goal is to exploit the capabilities of a multi-robot approach to design tools to support various tasks of everyday life elderly people. The project is a basic research initiative (started November 2002 to be completed by October 2005), whose expected results are prototype robots and system components, whose capabilities will be demonstrated in a domestic scenario suitably targeted to elderly people (see http://robocare.ip.rm.cnr.it/). The project is carried on by a national group and it includes several research units; the role of our group is to design and implement a coordinated multi robot system capable of autonomously accomplishing tasks such as: transportation of small objects, object and people search, building patrolling, discovery of potential risks, guidance and entertainment. The overall set-up will include small communication units handled by persons (both elderly people and support personnel), as well as complex intelligent devices (such as vision-based systems for monitoring and control), and mobile platforms that will interact together in order to accomplish complex tasks in the environment and to interact with people around. While the RoboCare project is focussed on developing technical solutions based on robotics and artificial intelligence techniques, the present proposal is more oriented to the development of a specific software infrastructure based on Microsoft Embedded Systems and to a comparison of this technology with ad hoc academic tools that are commonly used for
implementing research prototype systems. The technical achievments of the proposed research would represent a step towards the engineering of research prototype systems by relying on commercial platforms and standard technologies. Goals of the proposed research The proposed research activity aims at the following specific goals: 1. Use of Windows XP Embedded in mobile robots and intelligent devices. The applicability and potential for application of XP Embedded will be analysed for the system components and some prototype implementation of XP Embedded controlled devices will be realized. 2. Use of CE.NET, to design portable devices to be used by both the elderly people and support personnel. Portable communication devices can be used to interact with the overall system both to monitor the status and to request services. 3. E-services approach to the design of the multi-robot, multi-device interoperation infrastructure. The goals and activities each robot can perform will be characterized in terms of e-services and the interaction between the robots and the external control unit will be implemented as e-services requests. More specifically, the use of XP embedded will be experimented for programming intelligent devices and mobile robots. These components require both a customization of the operating system in order to manage specific hardware devices on board and powerful computation for executing complex tasks, such as image processing, scene reconstruction, planning and coordination. Moreover, robots and intelligent devices must interact with human persons (both elderly people and health-case house personnel) through portable devices. To this end, we intend to experiment the use of both commercial devices using Windows CE.NET and ad hoc devices designed and realized especially to be easily used by elderly persons. In particular, from the studies on usability of computer devices for elderly people that are developed by other units in the RoboCare project, we will define the interface for the realization of simple and easy to use ad hoc devices to be carried and used by elderly persons. For such devices, the availability of the CE.NET source code will allow for customizing them under the.net framework. Finally, the integration of all these components is a critical issue for our research project and we intend to create an infrastructure for communication among these devices that is based on e-services. This choice will allow for a high degree of interoperability among different devices and for an easy development of complex coordination mechanisms. Scientific contributions The main research issue that will be carried out in this project is the development of an autonomous multi-robot system, made up of heterogeneous robots, that have to perform complex tasks to support elderly people. In this context, many areas of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Robotics are involved, from computer vision to decision making systems. Specifically, our research focus will be on the following issues: multi-robot coordination, cooperative perception, human-robot interaction.
Multi-robot coordination is obtained by the combination of two techniques that have been successfully experimented in other fields: dynamic role assignment and action synchronization. These are necessary when robots operate in real and dynamic environments. Cooperative perception is the task of acquiring information from the environment by multiple (heterogeneous) robots, applying techniques for sensor fusion and information integration, this task is very important for taking decisions about the activities to be performed in the environment. Finally, the human-robot interaction is central in this project, since robots have to interact both with elderly people requiring their assistance and with personnel from a healthcare house asking them for services. Technical contributions Technical contributions of this research include prototype implementation of devices based on Windows CE.NET and Windows XP Embedded. Specifically, we will implement prototype software for three kinds of systems: 1) mobile robots based on Windows XP Embedded, 2) intelligent devices based on Windows XP Embedded, 3) portable devices based on Windows CE.NET. In addition we will define and implement an infrastructure for interoperability of all the developed devices based on e-services, which will be used for defining global strategies for accomplish common tasks as well as for effective and easy human-robot interaction. These contributions not only are fundamental for experimentation of techniques that are developed within our robotic projects, but also they will be useful for other robotic projects that have similar characteristics and provide for a common layer for different applications. Research activity The research activity we propose include the following phases: 1) definition of the experimental setting, including all the equipment that is necessary to demonstrate interoperability among different devices, i.e. mobile robots, intelligent devices, portable devices; 2) definition and implementation of the software for mobile robots and for intelligent devices based on Windows XP Embedded 3) definition and implementation of the software for commercial portable devices based on Windows CE.NET 4) porting of Windows CE.NET on top of special portable devices developed within the research project (*) 5) definition and implementation of an infrastructure for interoperability of such devices based on e-services 6) demonstration of the technical contributions developed during this research in an experimental setting reproducing a situation of interaction with elderly people in an environment representing a health-care house. (*) this point is optional and depends on the availability of the souce code for Windows CE.NET.
Resources available The group of people collaborating to the project is formed by 1 Full Professor, 2 Assistant Professors and 3 PhD students. Computers, robots and appliances from the project RoboCare (see reference below) will be available for development, as well as the experimental set-up. In addition, 1 full time technical collaborator will be hired for 1 year to work on the proposed project in case of funding. The research group has a good experience in developing robotic solutions for different applications (e.g. robotic soccer, service robotics, etc.) and has successfully realized many robotic systems participating with good performance to international robotic contexts, and the different techniques adopted have been subject of several relevant scientific pubblications. More details on the research work and pubblications are available in the Web at the URL : http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~multirob. Deliverables 1. Interim Technical Report (6 months), describing the development of the research and some preliminary implementation of functionalities on the different devices. 2. Final Technical Report (12 months - end of the project), describing the entire contribution of the research project, the implementation of the software for all the devices and the experimental results obtained in the demonstrations. 3. Prototype software for intelligent devices and mobile robots based on Windows XP Embedded 4. Prototype sofware for commercial portable devices (or custom devices) based on Windows CE.NET
Relevant Pubblications Design and Implementation of Modular Software for Programming Mobile Robots Alessandro Farinelli, Giorgio Grisetti, Luca Iocchi To appear in Software Practice & Experiences, 2003. Hough Localization for Mobile Robots in Polygonal Environments Luca Iocchi, Daniele Nardi Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 40, pp. 43-58, 2002. Global Hough Localization for Mobile Robots in Polygonal Environments G. Grisetti, L. Iocchi, D. Nardi In Proc. of International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA02), USA, 2002. Monitoring and Information Fusion for Search and Rescue Operations in Large-Scale Disasters Fabrizio D'Agostino, Alessandro Farinelli, Giorgio Grisetti, Luca Iocchi, Daniele Nardi In Proc. of 5th International Conference on Information Fusion, 672-679, 2002. Coordination in multi-agent RoboCup teams C. Candea, H. Hu, L. Iocchi, D. Nardi, M. Piaggio Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 36, pp. 67-86, 2001. Reactivity and Deliberation: A Survey on Multi-Robot Systems L. Iocchi, D. Nardi, M. Salerno In Balancing Reactivity and Social Deliberation in Multi-Agent Systems (LNAI 2103) Springer, 2001. Coordination among heterogenous robotic soccer players C. Castelpietra, L. Iocchi, D. Nardi, M. Piaggio, A. Scalzo, A. Sgorbissa In Proc. of International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'2000), Japan 2000.