  Eating is an essential activity of daily living (ADL) for staying healthy and
living at home independently. Although numerous assistive devices have been
introduced, many people with disabilities are still restricted from independent
eating due to the devices' physical or perceptual limitations. In this work, we
present a new meal-assistance system and evaluations of this system with people
with motor impairments. We also discuss learned lessons and design insights
based on the evaluations. The meal-assistance system uses a general-purpose
mobile manipulator, a Willow Garage PR2, which has the potential to serve as a
versatile form of assistive technology. Our active feeding framework enables
the robot to autonomously deliver food to the user's mouth, reducing the need
for head movement by the user. The user interface, visually-guided behaviors,
and safety tools allow people with severe motor impairments to successfully use
the system. We evaluated our system with a total of 10 able-bodied participants
and 9 participants with motor impairments. Both groups of participants
successfully ate various foods using the system and reported high rates of
success for the system's autonomous behaviors. In general, participants who
operated the system reported that it was comfortable, safe, and easy-to-use.
