March 17, 2025
A team of UW researchers has been working on increasing the accuracy and the finer social aspects of an assistive-feeding robot. ADA, for Assistive Dexterous Arm, consists of a robotic arm that can be affixed to a power wheelchair or other sturdy furniture and controlled by the user. Through a web app, the user decides what bite they want. To feed the person that bite, the system uses a camera to distinguish between foods on the plate, a sensor to apply the correct force, and facial recognition for aim.
Deployment in the real world
Recently, CREATE Ph.D. student Amal Nanavati led a 5-day deployment of the system in the home of community researcher Jonathan Ko. Ko, a patent attorney with quadriplegia, used ADA to feed himself ten meals in different rooms and during different activities and social contexts.
In the deployment, Nanavati and Ko discovered that being seated in bed limited Ko’s head movements and led to some tricky bites. Breakfasts might be eaten quickly, whereas a customized “rest mode” improved snacks while Ko worked.
Funding from CREATE
The deployment was partially funded by a CREATE Student Minigrant. Involving people with the lived experience of disability is a core aspect of CREATE-funded research.
“Our past studies have been in the lab because, if you want to evaluate specific system components in isolation, you need to control all other aspects of the meal, But that doesn’t capture the diverse meal contexts that exist outside the lab,” said Nanavati.
At the end of the day, the goal is to enable people to feed themselves in real environments, so we should also evaluate the system in those environments.
Lead author, CREATE Ph.D. student Amal Nanavati
Nanavati is the lead author and Ko a co-author of a paper, Lessons Learned from Designing and Evaluating a Robot-Assisted Feeding System for Out-of-Lab Use, presented this year at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. The presentation includes a video highlighting the findings and challenges.
ACM/IEEE video: findings and challenges
ACM/IEEE HRI conference presentation video showing Ko using the assistive feeding robot in his home and sharing his perspective and experience. Nanavati discusses the purpose of the project and the out-of-lab study.
OPB conversation with Ko and Nanavati
Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud radio program interviewed Nanavati and Ko on their collaboration. Ko explains what it’s like to have a bit more autonomy. Nanavati shares the complexity of designing the system.
Nanavati is co-advised by CREATE faculty Maya Cakmak and Siddhartha S. Srinivasa, founder of the Personal Robotics Lab that houses the research; both are senior authors on the paper.
A decade of research
Through about ten years of research, the assistive-feeding robot has graduated from feeding users fruit salads to full meals composed of nearly anything that can be picked up with a fork. Researchers also investigated how the robot can enhance the social aspects of dining.
The scope of the research has included CREATE Ph.D. graduate Ethan K. Gordon; Tyler Schrenk, the late president of the Tyler Schrenk Foundation and another community researcher; and Vy Nguyen, an occupational therapy clinical research lead at Hello Robot. Many more co-authors are listed in the paper.
This article includes excerpts from a UW News article and Amal Nanavati’s research website.