A laser pointer-based interaction method for providing robot assistance to people with upper limb impairments

As the global population ages, people with upper limb impairments are increasing. Limited healthcare resources struggle to meet the growing nursing demand. Recently, a laser-guided robotic assistance technology has been proposed. Characterized by low cost, intuitive operation, and user-friendly features, it has shown great potential in enhancing the independence and daily participation of people with disabilities. However, most research on laser pointer-guided robot assistance has two challenges, one is the interaction is often disrupted due to the noise spots in reflective and refractive environments, and the other is the predefined action execution under the laser guidance is difficult to reasonably accomplish the task. To address these problems, this paper presents a laser pointer-based interaction system for robotic assistance. First, a novel laser pointer with an ArUco marker is developed, which contributes to filtering the noise spots and detecting the intent spot. Then, a shared autonomy mechanism for laser pointer-based interaction is introduced, which can not only utilize laser spots to prompt the robot to perform predefined tasks but also guide the robot to perform non-predefined tasks during the execution. Finally, the proposed method is tested on the six reflective and refractive environments and four household tasks. Six volunteers are recruited to perform a subjective evaluation. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system and its feasibility in assisting individuals with upper limb impairments.