{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,16]],"date-time":"2026-06-16T22:57:04Z","timestamp":1781650624498,"version":"3.54.5"},"reference-count":42,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,20]],"date-time":"2026-04-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1776643200000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,4]],"date-time":"2026-06-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1780531200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":45,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"funder":[{"name":"Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["J NeuroEngineering Rehabil"],"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Assistance robots have the potential to increase the independence of people who require 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.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>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\u2019s end effector for precision manipulation.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      We showcase our system in the\n                      <jats:italic>Cybathlon 2024 Assistance Robot Race<\/jats:italic>\n                      , 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\u2019s mental load.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>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.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12984-026-01932-9","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,20]],"date-time":"2026-04-20T04:23:20Z","timestamp":1776659000000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Beyond Cybathlon: on-demand quadrupedal assistance for people with limited mobility"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"23","author":[{"given":"Carmen","family":"Scheidemann","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Andrei","family":"Cramariuc","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Changan","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jia-Ruei","family":"Chiu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Marco","family":"Hutter","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,20]]},"reference":[{"issue":"4","key":"1932_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"203","DOI":"10.1080\/09638280110072922","volume":"24","author":"A Lau","year":"2002","unstructured":"Lau A, McKenna K. 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This was done to reflect both our collaboration in the development of the system for the competition itself and their role as an expert operator of the proposed system. The proposal detailing the user study was reviewed by the ETH Zurich Ethics Commission. Based on this review, the Vice President for Research of ETH Zurich, Prof. Annette Oxenius, approved it without reservations. The official proposal title and reference number were as follows:\n                      Project 25 ETHICS-236: Cybathlon-Inspired Mobile Robotic Assistance at Home\n                      .","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"Consent was collected from the participant of the user study to gather data and video material containing them and their home. We explicitly reaffirmed their consent to have this data published in a non-anonymized form in the context of this publication.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare no Competing interests.","order":4,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"180"}}