Control of Human-Following Robot Based on Cooperative Positioning with an Intelligent Space

摘要

This paper proposes the localization method based on interactive communication between a mobile robot and a networked laser range scanner installed in an intelligent space and achieves human-following control of a mobile robot with the method. Generally, human tracking with cameras or laser range scanners on board the robots has been utilized for control of mobile robots to follow human walking. In addition to human tracking, mobile robots have to perform position estimation simultaneously. There is constraints in measurement for landmark detection or SLAM, because target human walks close to the robot while human following. Then, proposed system consiers to utilize an intelligent environment where sensors are distributed.The proposed system exchanges position and heading information estimated in the mobile robot and the networked laser range scanner with each other. The networked laser range scanner searches and detects target human and the robot based on the position information sent from the robot. The robot receives the detection results from the networked laser range scanner. Then, the estimate position is updated and reference velocities for human-following control are calculated with them. Estimation errors with odometry in the robot and unstable tracking of target in the networked laser range scanner are compensated with this system.In this paper, communication timing between the robot and the networked laser range scanners while human-following is discussed. Human-following experiments are performed and the results are shown.