Humanoid Robot RHP Friends: Seamless Combination of Autonomous and Teleoperated Tasks in a Nursing Context

TL;DR

This paper introduces RHP Friends, a humanoid robot capable of seamlessly combining autonomous and teleoperated tasks for nursing applications, demonstrating effective patient transfer and device operation in real-world scenarios.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel integrated system enabling a humanoid robot to perform diverse nursing tasks through autonomous and remote control capabilities.

Findings

Efficient patient transfer performed by the robot.

Successful remote operation of a circuit breaker.

System demonstrated reliably over multiple days at IREX.

Abstract

This paper describes RHP Friends, a social humanoid robot developed to enable assistive robotic deployments in human-coexisting environments. As a use-case application, we present its potential use in nursing by extending its capabilities to operate human devices and tools according to the task and by enabling remote assistance operations. To meet a wide variety of tasks and situations in environments designed by and for humans, we developed a system that seamlessly integrates the slim and lightweight robot and several technologies: locomanipulation, multi-contact motion, teleoperation, and object detection and tracking. We demonstrated the system's usage in a nursing application. The robot efficiently performed the daily task of patient transfer and a non-routine task, represented by a request to operate a circuit breaker. This demonstration, held at the 2023 International Robot Exhibition (IREX), conducted three times a day over three days.