Abstract
As the population of the world continues to grow in size and in age; it remains vital to develop streamlined and affordable technologies to address the needs of those most in need of companionship and care. The elderly and visually impaired remain a significant and ever-increasing segment of society, yet due to the cost of at-home health care, many of these individuals are unable to afford full-time caretakers to assist them in everyday tasks. Although the luxury of home care remains elusive to many due to the associated cost, social robots are an important and meaningful way to overcome this issue. The proposed research explores the combination of biomimicry and assistive technology with IoT and artificial intelligence, by proposing an all-in-one robot assistant called the Jet-I-U. This device would mimic the behavioral and physical characteristics of a pet scarlet macaw, to provide information and companionship to visually impaired and elderly individuals. The Jet-I-U would emulate its morphology and movement through laser-cut features and various biomimetic components. The intelligence and behavioral characteristics of the macaw are modeled through the application of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML). By utilizing platforms such as the NVIDIA Jetson Nano and leveraging IoT technologies, the Jet-I-U can assist the visually impaired and older adults in day-to-day tasks. In addition, this paper argues for the need to foster a human and robot pet relationship by not only focusing on essential tasks but also by studying how one can make the service robot more like its living physical counterpart. Such measures would make the pet-like robot assistant more acceptable and provide more meaningful interactions between the robot and its user.
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Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank all the researchers who have dedicated themselves to improving the lives of the visually impaired community. The first author would like to thank his teachers and parents, who guided him throughout the research and development of the Jet-I-U. Additionally, the first author would like to thank Dr. Ayush Goyal for his guidance and support. Lastly, the first author would like to express sincere gratitude to the 49ers STEM Leadership Institute, Chevron, Silicon Valley Education Foundation (SVEF), and the Fab Foundation for their commitment to supporting STEM education and fostering design thinking, fabrication, and communication skills among youth.
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Gandhi, S., Goyal, A. (2021). Enhancing Assistive Technology with Biomimicry and Social Robots. In: Abraham, A., Hanne, T., Castillo, O., Gandhi, N., Nogueira Rios, T., Hong, TP. (eds) Hybrid Intelligent Systems. HIS 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1375. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73050-5_73
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