Development of an omnidirectional mobile robot using a RGB-D sensor for indoor navigation

Abstract

The demand of service robots has increased in recent decades, especially for indoor robotics. Omnidirectional drive system is suitable to work in crowded and small space indoor environment like home, office, hospital etc. In modern robotics, researchers are keen to equip sensing ability into robots, which encourages the development and application of sensors in robot such as gyroscope and camera. Using a RGB-D sensor is a possible method to provide vision ability to a mobile robot. Moreover, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is one of popular approach to make robot identify its position by sensing the surrounding environment. In this work, we developed an omnidirectional driving mobile robot using Mecanum wheels, which is equipped a RGB-D camera to obtain the surrounding information. The calibration of the robot including the motors, the velocity and the object depth information were done. Demonstrations of object detection and mapping are included in this paper.