Setup and control architecture for an interactive Shopping Cart in human all day environments

Abstract

This paper describes the global robotics architecture for a service robot dedicated to commercial centers, i.e. an interactive Shopping Cart. A main focus is the introduction of robots into human all day environments. These environments often have a cluttered and nested character. They are full of dynamic objects. Especially the probable presence of many people is a special challenge to cope with. This paper introduces a setup and a control architecture to handle these challenges with a special focus on the interaction between the robot and one dedicated user of the robot. The design should take into account that not only a single robot but also a whole fleet of similar robots can be located in the same area. Therefore passive sensor systems are preferred to avoid glaring effects. The layered control architecture is cut out of a whole system architecture that contains additional communication and application logic capabilities. The two main tasks the control architecture has to fulfill is the navigation that is split in a topological and in a reactive part as well as interaction of the robot with its user and with other robots. It is supported by a set of logical sensors significantly.