The purpose of APR (Spanish Acronym for "Asistente Personal Robótico") is to develop a mobile assistant robot that can easily move within a household or workplace. The initial idea of the APR project was to develop remote-presence functions so that a person with disabilities could contact an APR robot at the workplace and thus maintain contact with co-workers by developing the remote presence concept.
With this new prototype, the Indra-Adecco Foundation Chair of Research in Accessible Technologies at the University of Lleida will provide society and companies with a new tool for streamlining the labour integration of people with disabilities.
The following stages have been completed in the framework of the initial robot design and development project:
- Development of a three-wheel omni-directional drive system enabling the robot to move with a manoeuvrability similar to that of a person.
- Development of an automatic control system with full supervision at all times of the operations and movements of the mobile robot and the objects or persons around the robot. The purpose is to prevent, anticipate and preclude possible situations of risk or collisions automatically with no need for external intervention.
- Development of a remote control system that lets a person with disabilities control the movements and upgrades of an APR robot in remote presence mode without requiring prior training.
Even though the robot is not yet ready to be rolled out onto the marketplace, the remote presence concept and its functions have been tested and validated, and operating conditions have been developed at the university that are similar to real conditions at an office.
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