A framework to optimize the efficiency and comfort of robot-assisted feeding systems

Robots could be invaluable allies for older adults and people with physical disabilities, as they could assist them in their day-to-day life and reduce their reliance on human carers. A type of robotic systems that could be particularly helpful are assisted feeding or bite-transfer robots, which are designed to pick up food from a plate and feed humans who are unable to move their arms or coordinate their movements. While many research teams worldwide have tried to develop robot-assisted feeding systems, most existing solutions do not consider how comfortable a user will feel when receiving a bite of food from the robot. In other words, these systems can be efficient at grasping and transferring foods of different shapes and sizes, but they do not consider how the bite will be received by users, for instance whether the robot will invertedly poke the user's face or mouth with the fork while delivering the bite. Researchers at Stanford University, University of Washington and Cornell University recently developed a new framework that tries to achieve an optimal balance between the efficiency and comfort of robot-assisted feeding systems.