Home automation is a growing field in robotics with a lot of interesting challenges to overcome. This project strives to aid the disabled and elderly who struggle with daily tasks like washing or tidying up dishes due to mobility / dexterity impairment. Through the use of robots that can autonomously pick and place dishes and/or utensils, we can arrange dishes onto a rack either for washing in a washing machine or drying off.

The end goal is to make the system as complete and consistent as possible to be ready for public use while ensuring the safety of the user, robot, and dishes.

We were inspired by the cross section of home automation and movements like aging in place which provide elders and the disabled the ability to live out their lives in dignity at home. As college students we are away from our aging parents and systems like this give us another option of helping them in their old age.

On the technical side this interesting robot manipulation (pick and place) problem addresses a lot of core robotics elements including the integration of hardware and software, sensing/computer vision (for object detection), machine learning, planning, actuation, forward/inverse kinematics, and more. What we learn about when exploring these key elements can be translated to help solve other important manipulation tasks.

We believe this setup could be translated into real world use with some modifications and improvements. In the future if we were to continue this project, we would aim to build on the quality of life features (smoother operation, better safety guarantees, water proof guarantees, manageable speed controls, more robust and dynamic dish support, and more) . We would also make some major changes to the setup like adding sensors on the robot (weight sensors, better depth mapping sensor, etc...) for better placement and the improved quality of life features. The core camera setup would also need to be mounted with full view and in a shock proof way to avoid disturbances from people coming and going.