Interactive collision avoidance system for indoor mobile robots based on human-robot interaction

Author(s):  
Mazen Ghandour ◽  
Hui Liu ◽  
Norbert Stoll ◽  
Kerstin Thurow
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-53
Author(s):  
Kerstin Thurow ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Hui Liu ◽  
Steffen Junginger ◽  
Norbert Stoll ◽  
...  

AbstractTransportation technologies for mobile robots include indoor navigation, intelligent collision avoidance and target manipulation. This paper discusses the research process and development of these interrelated technologies. An efficient multi-floor laboratory transportation system for mobile robots developed by the group at the Center for Life Science Automation (CELISCA) is then introduced. This system is integrated with the multi-floor navigation and intelligent collision avoidance systems, as well as a labware manipulation system. A multi-floor navigation technology is proposed, comprising sub-systems for mapping and localization, path planning, door control and elevator operation. Based on human–robot interaction technology, a collision avoidance system is proposed that improves the navigation of the robots and ensures the safety of the transportation process. Grasping and placing operation technologies using the dual arms of the robots are investigated and integrated into the multi-floor transportation system. The proposed transportation system is installed on the H20 mobile robots and tested at the CELISCA laboratory. The results show that the proposed system can ensure the mobile robots are successful when performing multi-floor laboratory transportation tasks.


Author(s):  
Margot M. E. Neggers ◽  
Raymond H. Cuijpers ◽  
Peter A. M. Ruijten ◽  
Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn

AbstractAutonomous mobile robots that operate in environments with people are expected to be able to deal with human proxemics and social distances. Previous research investigated how robots can approach persons or how to implement human-aware navigation algorithms. However, experimental research on how robots can avoid a person in a comfortable way is largely missing. The aim of the current work is to experimentally determine the shape and size of personal space of a human passed by a robot. In two studies, both a humanoid as well as a non-humanoid robot were used to pass a person at different sides and distances, after which they were asked to rate their perceived comfort. As expected, perceived comfort increases with distance. However, the shape was not circular: passing at the back of a person is more uncomfortable compared to passing at the front, especially in the case of the humanoid robot. These results give us more insight into the shape and size of personal space in human–robot interaction. Furthermore, they can serve as necessary input to human-aware navigation algorithms for autonomous mobile robots in which human comfort is traded off with efficiency goals.


Author(s):  
Stefan Schiffer ◽  
Alexander Ferrein

In this work we report on our effort to design and implement an early introduction to basic robotics principles for children at kindergarten age.  The humanoid robot Pepper, which is a great platform for human-robot interaction experiments, was presenting the lecture by reading out the contents to the children making use of its speech synthesis capability.  One of the main challenges of this effort was to explain complex robotics contents in a way that pre-school children could follow the basic principles and ideas using examples from their world of experience. A quiz in a Runaround-game-show style after the lecture activated the children to recap the contents  they acquired about how mobile robots work in principle. Besides the thrill being exposed to a mobile robot that would also react to the children, they were very excited and at the same time very concentrated. What sets apart our effort from other work is that part of the lecturing is actually done by a robot itself and that a quiz at the end of the lesson is done using robots as well. To the best of our knowledge this is one of only few attempts to use Pepper not as a tele-teaching tool, but as the teacher itself in order to engage pre-school children with complex robotics contents. We  got very positive feedback from the children as well as from their educators.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Williams

In previous work, researchers in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) have demonstrated that user trust in robots depends on effective and transparent communication. This may be particularly true forrobots used for transportation, due to user reliance on such robots for physical movement and safety. In this paper, we present the design of an experiment examining the importance of proactive communication by robotic wheelchairs, as compared to non-vehicular mobile robots, within a Virtual Reality (VR) environment. Furthermore, we describe the specific advantages – and limitations – of conducting this type of HRI experiment in VR.


Author(s):  
James Ballantyne ◽  
Edward Johns ◽  
Salman Valibeik ◽  
Charence Wong ◽  
Guang-Zhong Yang

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Stefan Schiffer ◽  
Alexander Ferrein

In this work, we report on our attempt to design and implement an early introduction to basic robotics principles for children at kindergarten age. One of the main challenges of this effort is to explain complex robotics contents in a way that pre-school children could follow the basic principles and ideas using examples from their world of experience. What sets apart our effort from other work is that part of the lecturing is actually done by a robot itself and that a quiz at the end of the lesson is done using robots as well. The humanoid robot Pepper from Softbank, which is a great platform for human–robot interaction experiments, was used to present a lecture on robotics by reading out the contents to the children making use of its speech synthesis capability. A quiz in a Runaround-game-show style after the lecture activated the children to recap the contents they acquired about how mobile robots work in principle. In this quiz, two LEGO Mindstorm EV3 robots were used to implement a strongly interactive scenario. Besides the thrill of being exposed to a mobile robot that would also react to the children, they were very excited and at the same time very concentrated. We got very positive feedback from the children as well as from their educators. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of only few attempts to use a robot like Pepper not as a tele-teaching tool, but as the teacher itself in order to engage pre-school children with complex robotics contents.


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