Autonomous Assistive Robot for Respiratory Rate Detection and Tracking

Assistive robotics has the objective to improve the quality of life of people in daily living, with a special aim to those who suffer of physical disabilities or cognitive impairment, which may be caused by an accident, disease or the natural process of ageing. Autonomous mobile robots can be adapted to work as assistive robots, because of their capabilities to navigate in unstructured environments and react to changes in it. In order to turn a mobile robot into an assistive robot, the contest of use and the set of functionalities to perform should be clearly identified, while limiting at the same time hardware complexity and costs, which are key factors against the application of assistive technologies into the real world. The present paper deals with the development of a home robot companion, an assistive robot, which is being realized at Università Politecnica delle Marche: its main contribution is the implementation of both a stance detection and respiratory rate algorithm by using the information provided by non-invasive sensors, and their integration into a low cost robotic platform which can perform navigation, user identification and tracking. The overall result is an assistive mobile robot which can increase safety at home for the user.