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YEAR BOOK |
University of Limerick
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Biomedical Electronics at the University of Limerick
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One application of healthcare robotics is autonomous assistants. The "greying" of the world's population will have a major healthcare impact in the future. According to the United Nations Population Division [2] the number of elderly people is increasing dramatically in modern day society. In Ireland by 2050 this will amount to approximately 192,000 people [3].
In response to this growing pool of potential users, research work is underway at UL to develop a life size anthropomorphic agent named LUCAS (Limerick University Computerised Assistive System). LUCAS is a mobile robotic assistant that is designed to assist elderly or disabled individuals with mild cognitive or physical impairments within a library environment. The existing library process is a time consuming and arduous process for people with impairments. The process involves going to a catalogue computer within the library and searching for the appropriate textbook. Once the textbook is located, a reference number that corresponds to a geographical location within the library is attained. Finally, the last stage involves traversing the library to find the corresponding location of the reference number to locate the textbook.
The aim of LUCAS is to reduce the complexity of this task for people. The user will initiate communication to LUCAS through a graphical interface on a library computer. LUCAS will then search through its database to find its corresponding location to the geographical location of the textbook. Using its anthropomorphic functionality, LUCAS will encourage the user to follow it to the location of the textbook. It will use both its navigational and localisation algorithms to correctly locate the textbook. The principal postgraduate researcher working on LUCAS is Julie Behan, whose work is being funded by IRCSET and supervised by Dr. Derek O'Keeffe, ECE Department, UL.
References:
1. http://www.ul.ie/~bel
2. U.N., World Population prospects: The 2002 Revision Population Database
3. M. J. Johnson, E. Guglielmelli, G. A. DiLauro, C. Laschi, A. Pisetta, G. Giachetti, C. Suppo, Y. Perella, M. C. Carrozza, P. Dario. The Robotic Appliance: The Next Generation Personal Assistant? in The 11th International Conference on Advanced Robotics. 2003. Coimbra, Portugal.
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Contact: Dr. Derek O'Keeffe,
Biomedical Electronics Laboratory,
ECE Department
University of Limerick;
E-mail: [email protected]