Toward a generic human machine interface for assistive robots: the AMOR project

This paper describes the development of generic human-machine interface (HMI) to control the manus assistive robot. The personalization of the HMI, according to each end user, is crucial for the usability of any assistive technology. The control of complex devices, such as robot having many degrees of freedom (DOF), with a limited number of DOF at the level of the user, implies an appropriate design of the HMI to facilitate the interaction. Our research activities focus mainly at this level, which means not only providing several functionalities of the controlled system, but also on the presentation of those functionalities to the user. The challenge is to hide the complexity of any controlled system to the user, and particularly, when these users are having severe disabilities. Preliminary results are also presented. This work is funded by a European program, through the AMOR project, and by national support, through the Smart Home project. A demonstration of the running prototype is presented during the conference.