Towards Wearable Interfaces for Robotic Caregiving

Abstract: Physically assistive robots in home environments can enhance the autonomy of individuals with impairments, allowing them to regain the ability to conduct self-care and household tasks. Individuals with physical limitations may find existing interfaces challenging to use, highlighting the need for novel interfaces that can effectively support them. In this work, we present insights on the design and evaluation of an active control wearable interface named HAT, Head-Worn Assistive Teleoperation. To tackle challenges in user workload while using such interfaces, we propose and evaluate a shared control algorithm named Driver Assistance. Finally, we introduce the concept of passive control, in which wearable interfaces detect implicit human signals to inform and guide robotic actions during caregiving tasks, with the aim of reducing user workload while potentially preserving the feeling of control.