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ICRA 2015

VIBI: Assistive vision-based interface for robot manipulation

Conference Paper Accepted Paper Artificial Intelligence · Robotics

Abstract

Upper-body disabled people can benefit from the use of robot-arms to perform every day tasks. However, the adoption of this kind of technology has been limited by the complexity of robot manipulation tasks and the difficulty in controlling a multiple-DOF arm using a joystick or a similar device. Motivated by this need, we present an assistive vision-based interface for robot manipulation. Our proposal is to replace the direct joystick motor control interface present in a commercial wheelchair mounted assistive robotic manipulator with a human-robot interface based on visual selection. The scene in front of the robot is shown on a screen, and the user can then select an object with our novel grasping interface. We develop computer vision and motion control methods that drive the robot to that object. Our aim is not to replace user control, but instead augment user capabilities through our system with different levels of semi-autonomy, while leaving the user with a sense that he/she is in control of the task. Two disabled pilot users, were involved at different stages of our research. The first pilot user during the interface design along with rehab experts. The second performed user studies along with an 8 subject control group to evaluate our interface. Our system reduces robot instruction from a 6-DOF task in continuous space to either a 2-DOF pointing task or a discrete selection task among objects detected by computer vision.

Authors

Keywords

  • Grasping
  • Three-dimensional displays
  • Mobile robots
  • Visualization
  • Manipulators
  • Cameras
  • Robot Manipulator
  • Control Method
  • User Study
  • Direct Control
  • Upper Body
  • Disabled People
  • Robotic Arm
  • User Control
  • Robotic Assistance
  • Visual Selection
  • End-users
  • Visual System
  • 2D Images
  • Point Cloud
  • Human-computer Interaction
  • Bounding Box
  • Limited Mobility
  • Depth Camera
  • Level Of Autonomy
  • Inliers
  • Visual Interface
  • Mobile Manipulator
  • Kinect Camera
  • Blue Spheres
  • Blue Label
  • Object Bounding Boxes

Context

Venue
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Archive span
1984-2025
Indexed papers
30179
Paper id
50552804331706392
v2026.09.13