Interactive Systems

A. Human-vehicle collaboration

B. Human-wheelchair collaboration

Brief: 

The elderly and disabled people have a strong demand for mobility assistance. Mobility limitations have been reported as increasingly prevalent in elderly people affecting about 35% of people aged 70 and the majority of people over 85 years old. Moreover, according to the data from the World Bank, one billion people, or 15% of the world's population, experience some form of disability. Though caring for the elderly and disabled people as they age and decline in physical and mental functioning may be exhausting and frustrating, it is a responsibility of the entire society. 

Wheelchairs are one of the tools that can play an important role in caring for the elderly and disabled people. Traditional wheelchairs are manually controlled by the users. They are simple, but the users must have the required level of strength and balance to propel themselves in the chair. In contrast, powered wheelchairs offer a range of controls, such as joysticks and touchpads, to move the chair. However, the technologies for existing powered wheelchairs mainly require the hands or even the upper arms of the users to flexibly move so that they can effectively operate the joysticks and touchpads. Undoubtedly, this type of powered wheelchair is unfriendly to people who need mobility assistance but cannot flexibly use their hands and arms. 

Aiming at improving the quality of medical care in terms of mobility assistance for the aforementioned group of people, this project will design and develop an intelligent powered wheelchair that has the following main features. 

1. Autonomy: supporting autonomous navigation and reactively avoiding stationary and moving obstacles. 

2. Advanced assistance: providing torque and force support, which is important to those who can input some control but the strength is insufficient. 

3. Multi-mode input: supporting different means for users to control the wheelchair, which may include but are not limited to voice, eye motion, head movement and brain signal.

C. Human-wheelchair interaction

D. Autonomous systems interacting with the world

This project involves some designs on UAV interacting with animals. The first work is about shark attack protection, the second work is about wild animal monitoring, and the third is about the herding of animals.

Shark attacks can make beach tourists anxious about sharing the ocean with apex predators. Although the raw number of shark attacks is deficient, the absolute terror caused by sharks is genuine. We propose to use drones to intervene and prevent shark attacks for protecting swimmers and surfers.

Protection of wild animals relies on understanding the interaction between the animals and their environment. With the ability to rapidly access rugged areas, aerial monitoring by drones is fast becoming a viable tool for ecologists to monitor wild animals. Unfortunately, this approach results in significant disturbance to different species of wild animals. Inspired by motion camouflage, we explore a navigation method for a drone to covertly observe a group of animals and their habitat.

The herding of animals mainly refers to driving a group of animals from one position to another. The current practice is to use herding dogs. We investigate the robotic herding by a fleet of drones and analyze its effectiveness via model-based simulations.

Published papers related to this project: 

X. Li, H. Huang, A. Savkin, A Novel Method for Protecting Swimmers and Surfers from Shark Attacks using Communicating Autonomous Drones, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2020.

X. Li, H. Huang, A. Savkin, Autonomous Navigation of an Aerial Drone to Observe a Group of Wild Animals with Reduced Visual Disturbance, IEEE Systems Journal, 2021.

X. Li, H. Huang, A. Savkin, J. Zhang, Robotic Herding of Farm Animals Using a Network of Barking Aerial Drones, Drones. 2021

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