  Assistive robotic devices can be used to help people with upper body
disabilities gaining more autonomy in their daily life. Although basic motions
such as positioning and orienting an assistive robot gripper in space allow
performance of many tasks, it might be time consuming and tedious to perform
more complex tasks. To overcome these difficulties, improvements can be
implemented at different levels, such as mechanical design, control interfaces
and intelligent control algorithms. In order to guide the design of solutions,
it is important to assess the impact and potential of different innovations.
This paper thus presents the evaluation of three intelligent algorithms aiming
to improve the performance of the JACO robotic arm (Kinova Robotics). The
evaluated algorithms are 'preset position', 'fluidity filter' and 'drinking
mode'. The algorithm evaluation was performed with 14 motorized wheelchair's
users and showed a statistically significant improvement of the robot's
performance.
