A Survey on the Application Trends of Home Service Robotics

The area of service robots has steadily gained interest over the years as an attempt for deploying robots to tackle problems faced in our everyday lives. In this article, a survey on the application areas of home service robots is presented. A collection of robotic appliances is selected to be introduced based on their application objective of being an active part in a home environment. The dominant application areas of robotic home service are identified and overviewed through the governing dipole of: a) consumer, and b) research. The functional capabilities of each robot are addressed from a design and specification point of view, in order to highlight their key enabling features and justify their inclusion to each application area.