ROS-Based Human Detection and Tracking from a Wireless Controlled Mobile Robot Using Kinect

Human detection and tracking is an important task in artificial intelligent robotic systems, which usually require a robust target detector to work in a variety of circumstances. In complex environments where a camera is installed on a wheeled mobile robot, this task becomes much more difficult. In this paper, we present a real-time remote-control system for human detection, tracking, security, and verification in such challenging environments. Such a system is useful for security monitoring, data collection, and experimental purpose. In the proposed system, a Kinect RGB-D camera from Microsoft is used as a visual sensing device for the design of human detection and tracking. We also implemented a remote-control system on a four-wheel mobile platform with a Robot Operating System (ROS). By combining these two designs, a wireless controlled mobile platform having the feature of real-time human monitoring can be realized to handle this task efficiently. Experimental results validate the performance of the proposed system for wirelessly controlling the mobile robot to track humans in a real-world environment.