Cyber-physical Support of Daily Activities

Abstract

This article introduces RAS, a cyber-physical system that supports individuals with memory limitations to perform daily activities in their own homes. RAS represents a partnership between a smart home, a robot, and software agents. When smart home residents perform activities, RAS senses their movement in the space and identifies the current activity. RAS tracks activity steps to detect omission errors. When an error is detected, the RAS robot finds and approaches the human with an offer of assistance. Assistance consists of playing a video recording of the entire activity, showing the omitted activity step, or guiding the resident to the object that is required for the current step. We evaluated RAS performance for 54 participants performing three scripted activities in a smart home testbed and for 2 participants using the system over multiple days in their own homes. In the testbed experiment, activity errors were detected with a sensitivity of 0.955 and specificity of 0.992. RAS assistance was performed successfully with a rate of 0.600. In the in-home experiments, activity errors were detected with a combined sensitivity of 0.905 and a combined specificity of 0.988. RAS assistance was performed successfully for the in-home experiments with a rate of 0.830.