Robotic home assistant Care-O-bot: Past - present - future

Technical aids allow elderly and handicapped people to live independently in their private homes as long as they wish. As a contribution to these required technological solutions, a demonstrator platform for a mobile home care system - called Care-O-bot - was designed and implemented by Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgart. Care-O-bot is a mobile service robot which has the capability to perform fetch and carry and various other supporting tasks in home environments. This paper gives an overview about Care-O-bot's functionalities and first practical tests