Background: Assistance robots have the potential to increase the independence of people who need daily care due to limited mobility or being wheelchair-bound. Current solutions of attaching robotic arms to motorized wheelchairs offer limited additional mobility at the cost of increased size and reduced wheelchair maneuverability. Methods: We present an on-demand quadrupedal assistance robot system controlled via a shared autonomy approach, which combines semi-autonomous task execution with human teleoperation. Due to the mobile nature of the system it can assist the operator whenever needed and perform autonomous tasks independently, without otherwise restricting their mobility. We automate pick-and-place tasks, as well as robot movement through the environment with semantic, collision-aware navigation. For teleoperation, we present a mouth-level joystick interface that enables an operator with reduced mobility to control the robot's end effector for precision manipulation. Results: We showcase our system in the \textit{Cybathlon 2024 Assistance Robot Race}, and validate it in an at-home experimental setup, where we measure task completion times and user satisfaction. We find our system capable of assisting in a broad variety of tasks, including those that require dexterous manipulation. The user study confirms the intuition that increased robot autonomy alleviates the operator's mental load. Conclusions: We present a flexible system that has the potential to help people in wheelchairs maintain independence in everyday life by enabling them to solve mobile manipulation problems without external support. We achieve results comparable to previous state-of-the-art on subjective metrics while allowing for more autonomy of the operator and greater agility for manipulation.

翻译：背景：辅助机器人有潜力提升因行动受限或依赖轮椅而需要日常照护者的独立性。当前将机械臂安装在电动轮椅上的解决方案以增加尺寸和降低轮椅机动性为代价，仅能提供有限的额外行动能力。方法：我们提出一种通过共享自主方式控制的按需四足辅助机器人系统，该系统结合了半自主任务执行与人类遥操作。凭借系统的移动特性，它能在需要时辅助操作者，并独立执行自主任务，而不会在其他方面限制其行动能力。我们实现了拾放任务的自动化，以及通过具备语义感知和碰撞感知的导航在环境中移动机器人。对于遥操作，我们提出一种口部高度的摇杆界面，使行动受限的操作者能够控制机器人末端执行器进行精确操作。结果：我们在《Cybathlon 2024辅助机器人竞赛》中展示了该系统，并在家庭实验环境中进行了验证，测量了任务完成时间和用户满意度。我们发现该系统能够协助完成包括需要灵巧操作在内的多种任务。用户研究证实了增加机器人自主性可减轻操作者精神负荷的直观判断。结论：我们提出了一种灵活的系统，通过使轮椅使用者能够在无外部支持的情况下解决移动操作问题，有望帮助他们在日常生活中保持独立性。我们在主观指标上取得了与先前最先进技术相当的结果，同时允许操作者拥有更高的自主性和更强的操作敏捷性。