ABSTRACT

Improving the quality of life particularly for the elderly and disabled persons is essential for society today. Despite their existing disabilities and limitations the elderly and the disabled still need and desire to be an integral part of society.
 Statistics shows that the number of persons requiring home health care in the year 2040 will make up nearly 3.5 % of the population. The need for companion robots is growing with factors such as an aging population, limited infrastructure and social support. Robots capable of assisting people in daily tasks and providing various services represent part of the future solution. 
The lack of a reusable platform is a significant obstacle to such a solution.  In this thesis, we are proposing an architecture that will enable the development and deployment of companion robots applications. The architecture consists of a set of components at different layers, ranging from low-level robotics services to end user application components. The multiple layers interact through RESTful web services. This architecture enables the development of a range of applications, and can deal with robots that have varying capabilities and hardware.