Eating is an activity of daily living (ADL) and losing the ability to self-feed can be devastating. Robots have the potential to assist people with this activity and potentially improve their quality of life. Successful robotic assistive feeding depends on reliable bite acquisition and easy bite transfer. Eating free-form food is one of the most intricate manipulation tasks we perform in our daily lives, demanding robust non-prehensile manipulation of a deformable hard-to-model target. Through this project, we are developing algorithms and technologies towards a robotic system that can autonomously feed people with upper-extremity mobility impairments.
