Design and Development of the Personal Mobility and Manipulation Appliance

For people with significant mobility impairments who also have both lower and upper limb disability, there are few technology solutions. The aim of this article is to describe the design and development of the Personal Mobility and Manipulation Appliance, a device that provides coordinated mobility and bimanual manipulation for people with both lower and upper limb impairment. The Personal Mobility and Manipulation Appliance is integrated from several commercial products and custom technologies, including two robotic arms mounted on a mobile robotic base. It has three primary operating modes: local user, remote user, and autonomous. It also has a cooperative control mode where two or more of the primary modes can be used simultaneously. The device was evaluated in a kitchen and was able to perform several complex tasks. Future work should focus on interface improvements and evaluations by end users.