Meal support system with spoon using laser range finder and manipulator

This paper presents an autonomous meal support robot system that can handle non-rigid solid food. The robot system is equipped with a laser range finder (LRF) and a manipulator holding a spoon. The LRF measures the 3D coordinates of surface points belonging to food on a plate. Then the robot determines the position of food surface to scoop, and the manipulator moves according to the calculated trajectory. The system has an advantage that preparation of food cutting in bite-size is not required. The proposed scooping control was implemented and verified in experiment with two kinds of non-rigid solid foods. It was shown that the robot can scoop foods for the most part with high success rate.