Robotic Aid to People with Disability By Means of an Innovative Communication Paradigm

This paper presents an innovative communication system for people with disability built on a robotic device. The communication between the user and the robot is based on the user's electromyographic (EMG) signals. User can issue high-level commands to the robot through a novel EMG based control. The robot controller is capable of decomposing these high-level commands into primitive subtasks using task grammar. The controller, than develops a dynamic plan that links the primitive subtasks with knowledge about the world view to accomplish the high-level commands. This system can provide an easy, less tiring and less error-prone communication system for people with disability. It does so by permitting people with disability and a robot to communicate taskrelevant information in a convenient, robust and reliable manner.