In the last decades, many researchers in the robotic field addressed the theme of assistive robotics, developing several mobile robotic platforms conceived to help weak or non-self-sufficient subjects. The current pandemic emergency, caused by Covid-19, has highlighted the need of freeing many activities from the presence of human operators, especially in hospital environments or geriatric wards and hospices, where patients may be endangered by the closeness to other people. Although human care cannot be replaced entirely (e.g., for complex operations and companionship), properly conceived and instrumented robotic agents can be entrusted with other duties.

Moreover, in the last decades, an unprecedented decrease in mortality and fertility rates in industrialized countries yielded a general ageing of the population. Such a phenomenon, that has been observed in the last decades, yielded the community of robotics researchers to focus its aims to answer the ever-growing demand of health care, housing, care-giving, and social security. Then, a lot of work has been done in the field, and the literature is rich especially for wheeled mobile robots. Mechanical design, navigation and motion planning, as well as safety related control strategies for human robot interaction are few examples of the interesting researchers conducted in the field.

In this context, the presented research primarily focuses on the design and prototyping of mobile robots and mechanisms concieved to help weak or non-self-sufficient subjects.