Hello Stretch community! With summer upon us, I wanted to share with you some of the great work being done in class projects at universities around the country over the past semester. Project-based learning has been very popular with Stretch, with courses being taught at five universities and more great new projects coming every term. Here’s a sample:
Georgia Tech - Robotic Caregivers (BMED 4833 ROB & BMED 8813 ROB)
Course website: Robotic Caregivers – From Dreams to Reality
Assistance with Misplaced Objects for People with Mild Cognitive Impairment
“Team Blue created a system to help people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) find misplaced objects. The system periodically goes around the home and takes photos of objects. When a person wants to find an object, they can ask the robot if it’s seen it. The robot then presents them with photos that have objects that match the description and offers to show the person where it took the photo. The team also considered having a lost-and-found box for the robot to put lost objects into.”
Team members: Oluwatofunmi Sodimu, Thanapol Tantagunninat, Daniel Lewis, Juan Antonio Robledo, Erin Kelly, Nikhil Chittaluru, Kanishk .
Sprout – Robot-Assisted Horticultural Therapy for People with Mobility Impairments
“Team Green created Sprout, a system for horticultural therapy for people with mobility impairments. The system helps people take care of plants and share their progress with others. Sprout can water plants, answer questions about horticulture using ChatGPT, and take time-lapse photos.”
Team members: Fiona Cheung, Netra Gandhi, Girish Hari, Joshua Shafran, Kefan Song, Alejandro V.
RoboFetch – Medicine Retrieval and Delivery for People with Parkinson’s Disease
“Team Red created RoboFetch, a system to retrieve and deliver an INBRIJA® (levodopa inhalation powder) inhaler to a person with Parkinson’s disease (PD) when they are experiencing an OFF episode that impairs mobility.”
Team members: Vivek Mallampati, Kuna Jere, Theodoros Zournatzis, Lucie Py, Wali Sohail, Shashank Garikipati, Christina Eneriz
Carnegie Mellon University - MRSD Projects (16-681, 16-682)
Auxilio Robotics - Alfred, the Friendly Indoor Robot
“Alfred is a friendly indoor robot that can assist seniors in elderly care facilities. The system’s overarching goal is to assist elders with low-risk tasks and enable better health monitoring.”
https://mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu/2023teamf/
Team members: Abhinav Gupta, Atharva Pusalkar, Praveen Venkatesh, Shaolin Kataria, Shivam Tripathy
Carnegie Mellon University - Robotic Caregivers and Intelligent Physical Collaboration (16-887)
Oregon State University - Assistive HRI (ROB 599)
Assistive Feeding with Stretch
This team focused on the challenge of helping persons with disabilities feed themselves with assistance from a Stretch robot, with the goal of increasing independence and reducing caretaker cognitive load. They built and tested a customized interface to reduce the difficulty of completing this task.
TheraCare - Pediatric Occupational Therapy
The TheraCare team envisioned Stretch as an occupational therapy tool for a child with a mobility-related disability. They developed a custom interface for controlling the robot remotely, and designed an eye display using a flexible LED array to let Stretch easily indicate where the robot operator is looking.
University of Washington - Robotics Capstone (CSE 481C)
Course website: CSE 481C Spring 2023
Lending A Hand: A Robot That Fetches A Walker For Parkinson’s Patients
Team Lending A Hand chose to address the issue ofParkinson’s patients being separated from their walking assistance devices. They created a system where Stretch can be given auditory instruction to fetch the walker for the patient and position it appropriately in front of the patient.
Team members: Siyin (Francesca) Wang, Sylvia Wang, Markus Schiffer, James Froelich
Assisting Individuals with Movement Impairments in Fetching Medicine with a Mobile Manipulator Robot
Team Big Stretch chose to tackle the issue of elderly persons with limited mobility who might need assistance getting objects like medication. The robot is capable of traveling to a destination that contains a collection of medicine, picking up the requested medicine bottle/container, and bringing it to the patient.
Team members: Donovan Kong, Ashley Mead, Leah Robison, Sol Zamora
Colostomy Care Robot
This team developed an application to help patients who use colostomy bags. The robot is made to delicately remove and dispose of a full colostomy bag, allowing the patient to independently manage this aspect of their personal care.
Team members: Matthew Chung, Varad Dhat, Steven Lok
A Teleoperated Mobile Manipulator Robot for Individuals with Severe Motor Impairments to Reposition Limbs
Team Reposition designed a system to work with individuals with severe motor impairments, assisting them in semi-autonomously repositioning their limbs in order to avoid pressure sores.
Team members: Isabella Nguyen, Kanav Gupta, Silence Yang
If you’ve worked with Stretch on one of these projects, or if you know of additional projects that aren’t listed above, please feel free to add more details below. I’m sure the rest of the community would love to see it!
