Robotic Communication Terminals : a Mobility Support System for the Elderly and Disabled People

摘要

This paper proposes Robotic Communication Terminals (RCT) as a mobility support system for the elderly and disabled people that assist for their impaired elements of mobility - recognition, actuation, and information access. The RCT consists of three types of terminals. One is the "environment-embedded terminal," which monitors a surrounding area and detects emerging obstacles and events, such as cars, bicycles and construction. Another one is the "user-carried mobile terminal," which is an advanced navigation system and provides suitable hardware and software interfaces to each user according to the status of user's physical impairment, such as types, levels, combinations and histories of impairment. The other is "user-carrying mobile terminal," which is a intelligent vehicle and has a driving support function in addition to the functions of another mobile terminal. These systems communicate with each other, and connect real-world, computer networks and users to provide a comfortable means of promoting mobility and freedom. In this paper, we propose the RCT and introduce the overview of our research. The recent progress is also presented as well as the future plan.