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With the emerging need for household applications, service robotics has become a hot spot attracting researchers globally. Universities, institutes, and industrial companies, either independently or collaboratively, have been focusing on research and development for household service robots, resulting in interesting and well-performing household service robotic systems. In this chapter, we first give a categorization of the various applications, followed by an elaboration of some highlighted cases with their overall system designs.

Mapping, localization, and navigation are functions necessitated by a diverse range of household service robot solutions. This chapter presents a wide variety of mapping, localization, and navigation techniques that suit a wide range of robot platforms and applications. The problem of mapping and localization has been approached in many ways and we review successful results attained by traditional radio tracking, ultra wideband sensing, RFID communication, North-Star infrared sensing, two-dimensional special pattern detection, laser-range surveying, various camera system sensing, time-of-flight camera ranging, and finally low-cost contact and near-field sensing. The problem of navigation, path planning, and obstacle avoidance requires not only sensing described above but adequate robot responses in a dynamic situation. There are many approaches to successful obstacle avoidance and our review of the literature covers the use of structured light as well as linear and planar sensors, along with visual processing techniques such as optic flow, ground plane segmentation, and feature-based obstacle avoidance, in addition to the optimization of path planning, robot interaction, and behavior.

Human–robot interaction (HRI) studies on how humans collaborate and interact with robots in an effective and natural way have received considerable attention in the robot research community, especially with regard to the design and development of household service robots, owing to their highly interactive characteristics in domestic service activities. Many researchers have proposed a variety of principles, algorithms, and systems to achieve an effective and natural HRI in the domestic environment. In this chapter, we first give a brief illustration of the state of the art for HRI, divided into several categories, and then elaborate on some selected cases with regard to the design and implementation of HRI systems.

Robotic grasping and manipulation comprise three subtasks, i.e., target detection, planning, and control. The robot first needs to detect the target. Here “detect” means to find (or recognize) the target and locate it. The target could be the object to be manipulated (e.g., electrical plugs) or the destination of the object (electrical sockets). Then the robot approaches the target in an optimized trajectory. In the process of approaching and grasping, the robot should be controlled to perform the task correctly and smoothly. In this chapter, we review the approaches to accomplish these three subtasks, i.e., target detection, planning, and control.

With the significant development of robotic technologies, the applications of robots have been extended broadly from their traditional industry role to military, medical field, and even daily services. Robotics has gradually become a very large industry with tremendous influence on the sustainable development of the world.