Initial Interaction Concept for a Robotic Toilet System

Abstract

Elderly people and persons with a disability may face significant limitations when using the standard "sitting" type water toilet as mostly used in the Western World. In this paper a new type of a stationary robotic toilet is outlined and the concept of the smart interaction between user and envisaged robotic toilet is described. Main functionality are height and tilt adjustment, support of sitting down and standing up, speech interaction, automatic recognition of the user and corresponding preferred settings of the toilet and automatic inference of potential emergency situations. The interaction is challenging due to the very different needs of the target group, the physical contact to the robotic system (actually the user is sitting on the robot) and the taboo area of toileting. First prototypes are currently being built and are planned to enter the evaluation stage early 2017.