Achievement

Robotic devices may provide beneficial assistance to people with disabilities and elders in a natural environment and are showing increasing progress. Therefore, a design and development approach that breaks from traditional robotics of creating fully autonomous and tele-operated robots towards symbiotic robotic systems that work in partnership with humans is needed. The participatory action design (PAD) model, emphasizing the involvement of end users along the entire product development processes, together with the traditional product development process, have been applied to develop a design framework called user participatory design (UPD). PerMMA is an assistive robotic device that aims to provide users with both mobility and manipulation assistance during their activities of daily life. The UPD framework shifted users from a more reactive role (focus groups and field trials) to a more active role, where they provide guidance during all critical steps of the design process