Task Execution with the Rehabilitation Robotic System FRIEND Ⅱ in Intelligent Home Environment

Task Execution with the Rehabilitation Robotic System FRIEND Ⅱ in Intelligent Home Environment

&nbsp;&nbsp;Rehabilitation robots (e.g. FRIEND as intelligent wheelchair mounted manipulator) are being developed to gain their user&quot;s autonomy within daily life or working environments. To prevent a high cognitive load onto the user, task input on a high level of abstraction is mandatory. State-of-the-art rehabilitation robots are still not capable to integrate fragments of intelligent behavior into an overall context and to solve complex tasks.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;A basic problem is how to cope with system complexity as well as computational complexity that evolve during task planning. A compromise towards feasibility is to equip the system as well as its environment with smart components that provide own intelligence and thus reduce the complexity of the robotic system. However, a structured approach is necessary to fuse the distributed intelligence. This contribution is based on current conference publications which focused either on the advances in the hardware components [1] respectively the software concept [2] of the rehabilitation robotic system FRIEND Ⅱ. This article gives complete overview in conjunction with recent details.