Eye-gaze control of a wheelchair mounted 6DOF assistive robot for activities of daily living

Background Building control architecture that balances the assistive manipulation systems with the benefits of direct human control is a crucial challenge of human-robot collaboration. It promises to help people with disabilities more efficiently control wheelchair and wheelchair-mounted robot arms to accomplish activities of daily living. Methods In this study, our research objective is to design an eye-tracking assistive robot control system capable of providing targeted engagement and motivating individuals with a disability to use the developed method for self-assistance activities of daily living. The graphical user interface is designed and integrated with the developed control architecture to achieve the goal. Results We evaluated the system by conducting a user study. Ten healthy participants performed five trials of three manipulation tasks using the graphical user interface and the developed control framework. The 100% success rate on task performance demonstrates the effectiveness of our system for individuals with motor impairments to control wheelchair and wheelchair-mounted assistive robotic manipulators. Conclusions We demonstrated the usability of using this eye-gaze system to control a robotic arm mounted on a wheelchair in activities of daily living for people with disabilities. We found high levels of acceptance with higher ratings in the evaluation of the system with healthy participants.