Robotic Assistance with Dressing

Overview

Our research seeks to create mechanical aids for people who have difficulty dressing themselves. The physical task of putting on a shirt or another article of clothing can be difficult or impossible if one has limited movement in an arm or a leg. People who may be in need of such help include older adults, wounded veterans, and people who have suffered a stroke.

It is difficult to appreciate the need for such assistance if you are a fully able-bodied person. To better understand the issues involved, try the following. Imagine that you have lost the ability to use your dominant hand (your right hand if you are a right-handed person). Now, try putting on a shirt without using your dominant hand. Once you have finished this exercise, then try to imagine going through the same task for each of your articles of clothing, every day of your life. As you have probably discovered for yourself, people with limited motion in their limbs sometimes require another person to assist them in putting on their clothing. A person might feel reluctance in asking others to help with such a personal task as putting on clothes. Our research seeks to create a mechanical system for helping people put on clothing, so that they do not require assistance from another person.

We have many mechanical devices in our lives that make our daily physical tasks easier. Our dishwashing machines, coffee makers, automobiles, washers and driers are all mechanical devices that perform physical tasks to make our lives easier. In the future, an even wider variety of devices will be available to assist people in various physical tasks. We envision that one day, help in putting on clothing will be yet another task that can be performed using a mechanical device, for those who are in need of such assistance.

Team Members

Charlie Kemp (coPI)

Karen Liu (PI)

Jie Tan

Greg Turk (coPI)

Wenhao Yu

Yunbo Zhang

Papers

Assistive VR Gym: Using Interactions with Real People to Improve Virtual Assistive Robots, Zackory Erickson*, Yijun Gu*, and Charles C. Kemp, IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2020.
[PDF] [Video] [Code]

Bodies at Rest: 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation from a Pressure Image using Synthetic Data, Henry M. Clever, Zackory Erickson, Ariel Kapusta, Greg Turk, C. Karen Liu, Charles C. Kemp. Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2020. (Accepted for Oral Presentation)
[PDF] [Video] [Code]

Assistive Gym: A Physics Simulation Framework for Assistive Robotics, Zackory Erickson, Vamsee Gangaram, Ariel Kapusta, C. Karen Liu, and Charles C. Kemp, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020.
[PDF] [Video] [Code]

Learning to Collaborate from Simulation for Robot-Assisted Dressing, Alex Clegg, Zackory Erickson, Patrick Grady, Greg Turk, Charles C. Kemp, and C. Karen Liu, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2020.
[PDF] [Video]

Personalized collaborative plans for robot-assisted dressing via optimization and simulation, Ariel Kapusta, Zackory Erickson, Henry M. Clever, Wenhao Yu, C. Karen Liu, Greg Turk, Charles C. Kemp, Autonomous Robots, 2019.
[Paper] [Video]

Synthesis of Biologically Realistic Human Motion Using Joint Torque Actuation, Yifeng Jiang, Tom Wouwe, Friedl De Groote and C. Karen Liu. in Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH), 2019
[PDF] [Video] [Code]

Multidimensional Capacitive Sensing for Robot-Assisted Dressing and Bathing, Zackory Erickson, Henry M. Clever, Vamsee Gangaram, Greg Turk, C. Karen Liu, and Charles C. Kemp, International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), 2019.
[PDF] [Video]

Learning to Dress: Synthesizing Human Dressing Motion via Deep Reinforcement Learning, Alex Clegg, Wenhao Yu, Jie Tan, C. Karen Liu and Greg Turk, in Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH Asia), 2018
[PDF] [Video]

Tracking Human Pose During Robot-Assisted Dressing using Single-Axis Capacitive Proximity Sensing, Zackory Erickson, Maggie Collier, Ariel Kapusta, and Charles C. Kemp, in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2018
[PDF] [Video]

Data-Driven Approach to Simulating Realistic Human Joint Constraints, Yifeng Jiang and C. Karen Liu, in n IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018
[PDF] [Video] [Code]

3D Human Pose Estimation on a Configurable Bed from a Pressure Image, Henry M. Clever, Ariel Kapusta, Daehyung Park, Zackory Erickson, Yash Chitalia, and Charles C. Kemp, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2018
[PDF] [Video] [Code]

Deep Haptic Model Predictive Control for Robot-Assisted Dressing, Zackory Erickson, Henry M. Clever, Greg Turk, C. Karen Liu, and Charles C. Kemp, in in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018
[PDF] [Video]

Learning to Navigate Cloth using Haptics, Alex Clegg, Wenhao Yu, Zackory Erickson, C. Karen Liu, and Greg Turk, in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2017
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Preparing for the Unknown: Learning a Universal Policy with Online System Identification, Wenhao Yu, Jie Tan, C. Karen Liu, and Greg Turk, Robotics Science and Systems (RSS), 2017
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Haptic Data Simulation for Robot-Assisted Dressing, Wenhao Yu, Ariel Kapusta, Charlie Kemp, Greg Turk, and C. Karen Liu, in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2017
[PDF] [Video]

What Does the Person Feel? Learning to Infer Applied Forces during Robot-Assisted Dressing, Zackory Erickson, Alex Clegg, Wenhao Yu, Greg Turk, C. Karen Liu, and Charlie Kemp, in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2017
[PDF] [Video] [Code]

Data-Driven Haptic Perception for Robot-Assisted Dressing, Ariel Kapusta, Wenhao Yu, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee, C. Karen Liu, Greg Turk, and Charles C. Kemp, in IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2016
[PDF] [Video]

Optimization of Robot Configurations for Assistive Tasks, Ariel Kapusta and Charles C. Kemp, in RSS Workshop on Planning for Human-Robot Interaction: Shared Autonomy and Collaborative Robotics, 2016
[PDF]

Dexterous Manipulation of Cloth, Yunfei Bai, Wenhao Yu (co-first author), and C. Karen Liu, in Computer Graphics Forum (Eurographics), 2016
[PDF] [Video]

Animating Human Dressing, Alex Clegg, Jia Tan, Greg Turk, and C. Karen Liu, in Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH), 2015
[PDF] [Video]