A Novel Auxiliary Excretion Approach to a Lavatory Robot with Safety and Robustness
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
An auxiliary excretion robot (AER) with autonomous movement capability and self-cleaning capability is proposed in this paper. The topic of the article is interesting. The safety and robustness of the proposed approach have been verified quite fully by experimental results. The novelty and application of the proposed method are suitable for publication in this journal.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
I have give detailed comments in the attached pdf file of your paper. First, let me say that it is an important area of research and if successful, it would be a nice tool for the people that need it.
Here are some general concerns. see the attached pdf for specifics.
1. The English needs to be improved.
2. There are no mentions of any IRBs done to allow subject testing
3. The results are not clear. No subject data is given with variations etc.
4. I think that an analysis of how accurately you can position the robot and how accurately you can track the human legs should be given....use a dummy and measure the angles and distances and see if your algorithm can match the values.
5. The human factors study needs to be explained better and the data needs to be shown.
6. It would be nice to show the system in action with a video clip that you can include in the paper on YouTube.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
COMMENTS RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. The article can be considered as valuable, interesting and suitable for the journal. It aims with the concept of service robot specialised on area of so-called ambient-assisted living systems – helping the elderly and disabled people especially with personal hygiene – so-called Auxiliary Excretion Robot development. According to current stat-of-the-art (chapter Introduction) such system is implemented on assistent robots very rear, if ever. So the research can bring interesting results, mainly in robust system for posture recognition (key process for manipulation with patiente).
2. Introduction – lines 45 to 48. There are used 5 references in quite general sentences while the articles seems to be more specific. For instance reference 14 is probably related to „mobile nursing robot“, however the article is more detailed focused on gesture recognition system for nursing robot; what about reference 15 (innovative structural design and simulation of dual-arm robot) and heavy nursing work. I recommend check the relevance of the links / references, or adjust the text.
3. „The lidar sensor“ there is mentioned several times (especially chapter 2). However, there is not mentioned (or I dindnt find it) the exact type / product name of lidar sensor, including the its name, company name, references, etc.
4. Mathematic aparat seems to be correct.
5. Chapter 4, line 372: sentence, I recommend to check, and improve (3 times „experiment“). „ .... are introduced to experiment with the path tracking experiment and the transfer experiment assisted by).
6. There is not mentioned (or I didnt catch it) the simulation software (name, etc.), where the figure 10 has been prepared. Plase add these relevant information – in the text, as well as figure 10 caption.
Reference list seems to be adequate. It contains 41 items the text. They are properly cited.
1. The results, or contribution can be described a bit more.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the detailed comments on my review. The paper is much improved. The title still has a typo and incorrect grammar. It should be "A Novel Auxiliary Excretion Approach to a Lavatory Robot with Safety and Robustness. Like in the title, minor English edits are recommended... do a little more proof reading. I would still include the IRB information (protocol # etc.) in the text of the paper.
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
