An autonomous robotic assistant for elderly people living alone.
Rosebot is a robot designed to help elderly people who live independently. The idea came from my Great Grandma Rose, who fell in her apartment and was on the floor for two days before anyone found out. The CDC reports 1 in 4 adults over 65 fall every year, and a Cambridge study found that 80% of people who fall and can't get up don't call for help, even when they have alarm systems, often because of cognitive or mental barriers. So the robot has to come to them.
Rosebot is built around a four-deck chassis I designed in Fusion 360 and fabricated from laser-cut MDF and 3D-printed parts. A Kiwi-style three-wheel omni drive handles movement, a telescoping rack-and-pinion camera mast adjusts the head height for face-level interaction, and a Lenovo tablet on the top deck provides a screen. A REV Control Hub runs the motors in Java, and a Raspberry Pi 5 with a Hailo-8 AI Hat runs vision, fall detection, and English speech in Python. The two systems talk to each other over a hardwired Redis bus.
I submitted Rosebot to the LA County Science & Engineering Fair, where it placed third in its category.
Four-deck chassis, designed and fabricated at home
The whole structure is custom: laser-cut MDF plates for the four decks, 3D-printed wheel cases, motor tensioners, and a rack-and-pinion holder for the camera mast. Aluminum extrusions tie the decks together. CAD in Fusion 360, fabrication in the garage.
Kiwi drive and a telescoping camera mast
Three omni-wheels at 120-degree offsets give the robot omnidirectional movement in tight apartment spaces. A 1-meter rack-and-pinion mast raises and lowers the head camera so it can meet a standing person at face height or look down to check the floor.
Two brains, one robot
A REV Control Hub runs the motor coordination loop in Java. A Raspberry Pi 5 with a Hailo-8 AI Hat handles vision, face recognition, fall detection, and speech in Python. The two systems originally talked over WiFi, but reliability was bad, so I moved to a hardwired link with Redis as the messaging layer.