Development of a robotic arm for handicapped people: A task-oriented design approach

Abstract

In this paper, a task-oriented design (TOD) procedure is proposed by which a robotic arm can be designed to achieve predefined tasks. To define the target tasks, we have spent about six months, observing everyday life of disabled people, and have determined 12 important tasks. By using TOD procedure in a coherent and consistent manner, we have developed a working prototype of a care-providing robotic arm for physically disabled people. Through experiments, we confirmed that the developed robotic arm is indeed able to carry out the predefined tasks.