| Title: | The complex structure of simple devices: A survey of trajectories and forces that open doors and drawers |
| Author: | Jain, Advait ; Nguyen, Hai ; Rath, Mrinal ; Okerman, Jason ; Kemp, Charles C. |
| Abstract: | Instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) involve physical interactions with diverse mechanical systems found within human environments. In this paper, we describe our efforts to capture the everyday mechanics of doors and drawers, which form an important sub-class of mechanical systems for IADLs. We also discuss the implications of our results for the design of assistive robots. By answering questions such as “How high are the handles of most doors and drawers?” and “What forces are necessary to open most doors and drawers?”, our approach can inform robot designers as they make tradeoffs between competing requirements for assistive robots, such as cost, workspace, and power. Using a custom motion/force capture system, we captured kinematic trajectories and forces while operating 29 doors and 15 drawers in 6 homes and 1 office building in Atlanta, GA, USA. We also hand-measured the kinematics of 299 doors and 152 drawers in 11 area homes. We show that operation of these seemingly simple mechanisms involves significant complexities, including non-linear forces and large kinematic variation. We also show that the data exhibit significant structure. For example, 91.8% of the variation in the force sequences used to open doors can be represented using a 2-dimensional linear subspace. This complexity and structure suggests that capturing everyday mechanics may be a useful approach for improving the design of assistive robots. |
| Description: |
©2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works. DOI:10.1109/BIOROB.2010.5626754 Presented at the 3rd IEEE RAS and EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), 2010, Tokyo. |
| Type: |
Proceedings
Post-print |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1853/37352 |
| ISSN: | 2155-1774 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-4244-7708-1 |
| Citation: | Jain, A. ; Hai Nguyen ; Rath, M. ; Okerman, J. ; Kemp, C.C., “The complex structure of simple devices: A survey of trajectories and forces that open doors and drawers,” 3rd IEEE RAS and EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), 2010, 184-190. |
| Date: | 2010-09 |
| Contributor: |
Georgia Institute of Technology. Healthcare Robotics Lab
Georgia Institute of Technology. Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines |
| Publisher: |
Georgia Institute of Technology
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers |
| Subject: |
Biomechanics
Doors Medical robotics |
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