An Outdoor Human-tracking Method Based on 3D Lidar for Quadruped Robots

Abstract

This paper introduces a system of detecting and tracking human for quadruped robots based on raw 3D point cloud data returned by VLP-16 lidar. Quadruped robots need to follow a leader to avoid potential dangers when carrying heavy loads in outdoor environments especially in the filed environment with complicated road conditions where they cannot plan their own paths. 3D lidar is better than 2D lidar in speed and accuracy when collecting point cloud data. In this paper, a ground segmentation method based on ground plane fitting is discussed, and a human detection method based on point cloud clustering and an enhanced characteristic using reflection intensity is carried out. The experimental results demonstrate that the system we builed can be well applied to quadruped robot for tracking human in outdoor environment.