Edwin Aguirre, UMass Lowell's Science and Technology writer from the Office of Public Affairs, visited the Robotics Lab in December to investigate our latest assistive robotics work. He saw the inner workings of our two wheelchair-mounted robotic arms.

The first system, DORA (short for door-opening robot arm) was designed and built by Robotics Lab graduate Erin Rapacki (MS), who is now at Anybots. DORA features a one degree of freedom gripper that can unlatch door knobs and door handles that open in either the clockwise or counter-clockwise directions.

The second system, Halo, was a Manus ARM (a commercially available device) with a new user interface designed for people with cognitive impairments. Instead of using the keypad and telling Halo every single step, the user can select the desired object from a touch screen display and Halo autonomously retrieves the object.

The full article can be found at http://www.uml.edu/Media/eNews/Wheelchair_robotic_arms.html.

(Photo by Edwin Aguirre. Caption: Computer Science doctoral candidate Katherine Tsui demonstrates DORA, the low-cost Door-Opening Robot Arm developed by Erin Rapacki at the UMass Lowell Robotics Lab.)

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