scholarly journals A Multi-Modal Person Perception Framework for Socially Interactive Mobile Service Robots

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Müller ◽  
Tim Wengefeld ◽  
Thanh Quang Trinh ◽  
Dustin Aganian ◽  
Markus Eisenbach ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Person Perception ◽  
Tracking System ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Cluttered Environments ◽  
Detection Systems ◽  
Active Research ◽  
Identification Of Persons

In order to meet the increasing demands of mobile service robot applications, a dedicated perception module is an essential requirement for the interaction with users in real-world scenarios. In particular, multi sensor fusion and human re-identification are recognized as active research fronts. Through this paper we contribute to the topic and present a modular detection and tracking system that models position and additional properties of persons in the surroundings of a mobile robot. The proposed system introduces a probability-based data association method that besides the position can incorporate face and color-based appearance features in order to realize a re-identification of persons when tracking gets interrupted. The system combines the results of various state-of-the-art image-based detection systems for person recognition, person identification and attribute estimation. This allows a stable estimate of a mobile robot’s user, even in complex, cluttered environments with long-lasting occlusions. In our benchmark, we introduce a new measure for tracking consistency and show the improvements when face and appearance-based re-identification are combined. The tracking system was applied in a real world application with a mobile rehabilitation assistant robot in a public hospital. The estimated states of persons are used for the user-centered navigation behaviors, e.g., guiding or approaching a person, but also for realizing a socially acceptable navigation in public environments.

scholarly journals Avoiding blind leading the blind

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 172988141666608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhijeet Ravankar ◽  
Ankit A Ravankar ◽  
Yukinori Kobayashi ◽  
Takanori Emaru
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Multiple Robots ◽  
Robot System ◽  
Collective Goal ◽  
Position And Orientation ◽  
Mobile Service Robot ◽  
Multi Robot

Virtual pheromone trailing has successfully been demonstrated for navigation of multiple robots to achieve a collective goal. Many previous works use a pheromone deposition scheme that assumes perfect localization of the robot, in which, robots precisely know their location in the map. Therefore, pheromones are always assumed to be deposited at the desired place. However, it is difficult to achieve perfect localization of the robot due to errors in encoders and sensors attached to the robot and the dynamics of the environment in which the robot operates. In real-world scenarios, there is always some uncertainty associated in estimating the pose (i.e. position and orientation) of the mobile service robot. Failing to model this uncertainty would result in service robots depositing pheromones at wrong places. A leading robot in the multi-robot system might completely fail to localize itself in the environment and be lost. Other robots trailing its pheromones will end up being in entirely wrong areas of the map. This results in a “blind leading the blind” scenario that reduces the efficiency of the multi-robot system. We propose a pheromone deposition algorithm, which models the uncertainty of the robot’s pose. We demonstrate, through experiments in both simulated and real environments, that modeling the uncertainty in pheromone deposition is crucial, and that the proposed algorithm can model the uncertainty well.

scholarly journals Improving the robustness of a service robot for continuous indoor monitoring: An incremental approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 172988142110121
Author(s):  
David Portugal ◽  
André G Araújo ◽  
Micael S Couceiro
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Technology Readiness ◽  
Incremental Approach ◽  
Technology Readiness Level ◽  
Readiness Level ◽  
Software And Hardware ◽  
Indoor Monitoring

To move out of the lab, service robots must reveal a proven robustness so they can be deployed in operational environments. This means that they should function steadily for long periods of time in real-world areas under uncertainty, without any human intervention, and exhibiting a mature technology readiness level. In this work, we describe an incremental methodology for the implementation of an innovative service robot, entirely developed from the outset, to monitor large indoor areas shared by humans and other obstacles. Focusing especially on the reliability of the fundamental localization system of the robot in the long term, we discuss all the incremental software and hardware features, design choices, and adjustments conducted, and show their impact on the performance of the robot in the real world, in three distinct 24-h long trials, with the ultimate goal of validating the proposed mobile robot solution for indoor monitoring.

Self-Calibration of Eye-to-Hand and Workspace for Mobile Service Robot

2012 ◽  
pp. 229-246
Author(s):  
Jwu-Sheng Hu ◽  
Yung-Jung Chang
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Calibration Method ◽  
Industrial Robots ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Robot Arm ◽  
Self Calibration ◽  
Laser Distance Sensor ◽  
Distance Sensor

The geometrical relationships among robot arm, camera, and workspace are important to carry out visual servo tasks. For industrial robots, the relationships are usually fixed and well calibrated by experienced operators. However, for service robots, particularly in mobile applications, the relationships might be changed. For example, when a mobile robot attempts to use the visual information from environmental cameras to perform grasping, it is necessary to know the relationships before taking actions. Moreover, the calibration should be done automatically. This chapter proposes a self-calibration method using a laser distance sensor mounted on the robot arm. The advantage of the method, as compared with pattern-based one, is that the workspace coordinate is also obtained at the same time using the projected laser spot. Further, it is not necessary for the robot arm to enter the view scope of the camera for calibration. This increases the safety when the workspace is unknown initially.

Automatically Annotated Mapping for Indoor Mobile Robot Applications

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Gürcan Özkil ◽  
Thomas Howard
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Robot ◽  
Practical Method ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Indoor Environments ◽  
And Topology ◽  
Localization And Mapping ◽  
Indoor Mobile Robot ◽  
Mobile Service Robots

This paper presents a new and practical method for mapping and annotating indoor environments for mobile robot use. The method makes use of 2D occupancy grid maps for metric representation, and topology maps to indicate the connectivity of the ‘places-of-interests’ in the environment. Novel use of 2D visual tags allows encoding information physically at places-of-interest. Moreover, using physical characteristics of the visual tags (i.e. paper size) is exploited to recover relative poses of the tags in the environment using a simple camera. This method extends tag encoding to simultaneous localization and mapping in topology space, and fuses camera and robot pose estimations to build an automatically annotated global topo-metric map. It is developed as a framework for a hospital service robot and tested in a real hospital. Experiments show that the method is capable of producing globally consistent, automatically annotated hybrid metric-topological maps that is needed by mobile service robots.

Research on Technology and Application of Multi-Sensor Data Fusion for Indoor Service Robots

2014 ◽  
Vol 651-653 ◽  
pp. 831-834
Author(s):  
Xi Pei Ma ◽  
Bing Feng Qian ◽  
Song Jie Zhang ◽  
Ye Wang
Keyword(s):  
Data Fusion ◽  
Autonomous Navigation ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Sensor Data Fusion ◽  
Multi Sensor Data Fusion

The autonomous navigation process of a mobile service robot is usually in uncertain environment. The information only given by sensors has been unable to meet the demand of the modern mobile robots, so multi-sensor data fusion has been widely used in the field of robots. The platform of this project is the achievement of the important 863 Program national research project-a prototype nursing robot. The aim is to study a mobile service robot’s multi-sensor information fusion, path planning and movement control method. It can provide a basis and practical use’s reference for the study of an indoor robot’s localization.

Learning from Demonstration with State Based Obstacle Avoidance for Mobile Service Robots

2013 ◽  
Vol 394 ◽  
pp. 448-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.A. Nippun Kumaar ◽  
T.S.B. Sudarshan
Keyword(s):  
Obstacle Avoidance ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Learning From Demonstration ◽  
Service Robotics ◽  
Mobile Service Robots ◽  
Novel Approaches ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Mobile Service Robot

Learning from Demonstration (LfD) is a technique for teaching a system through demonstration. In areas like service robotics the robot should be user friendly in terms of coding, so LfD techniques will be of greater advantage in this domain. In this paper two novel approaches, counter based technique and encoder based technique is proposed for teaching a mobile service robot to navigate from one point to another with a novel state based obstacle avoidance technique. The main aim of the work is to develop an LfD Algorithm which is less complex in terms of hardware and software. Both the proposed methods along with obstacle avoidance have been implemented and tested using Player/Stage robotics simulator.

scholarly journals Iterative learning control for path tracking of service robot in perspective dynamic system with uncertainties

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 172988142096852
Author(s):  
Wang Yugang ◽  
Zhou Fengyu ◽  
Zhao Yang ◽  
Li Ming ◽  
Yin Lei
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic System ◽  
Iterative Learning Control ◽  
Learning Control ◽  
Path Tracking ◽  
Iterative Learning ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Motion Information ◽  
Mobile Service Robots

A novel iterative learning control (ILC) for perspective dynamic system (PDS) is designed and illustrated in detail in this article to overcome the uncertainties in path tracking of mobile service robots. PDS, which transmits the motion information of mobile service robots to image planes (such as a camera), provides a good control theoretical framework to estimate the robot motion problem. The proposed ILC algorithm is applied in accordance with the observed motion information to increase the robustness of the system in path tracking. The convergence of the presented learning algorithm is derived as the number of iterations tends to infinity under a specified condition. Simulation results show that the designed framework performs efficiently and satisfies the requirements of trajectory precision for path tracking of mobile service robots.

Control of a Mobile Service Robot Using Human Evaluations of Task-related Movement Patterns

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 689-701
Author(s):  
John Travis Butler ◽  
◽  
Arvin Agah ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Subjects ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Future Application ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Body Design ◽  
Mobile Service Robots ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Robot Body

An important future application of robotics will be the utilization of mobile service robots in homes and offices, assisting people with their daily chores. Above all, these robots must be safe to use. In addition, service robots must be designed to be effective, productive, and user-friendly. In order for people to accept and use these robots, the robots must behave in a manner acceptable to humans. The intelligent control of service robots must take into. account the effects of robot behaviors on people. This paper focuses on the interactions between humans and mobile service robots, studying how people respond to a variety of robot behaviors as the robot performs certain tasks. Since different people could react differently to service robots, this paper reports on the effects of users' gender, age, technical background, and robot body preference on the responses to robot behaviors. The robot behaviors include the robot approaching a human, the robot avoiding a human while passing, and the robot performing non-interactive behaviors. The level of comfort the robot caused human subjects was analyzed according to the effects of robot speed, robot distance, and robot body design. It is hoped that information gained from human factor studies can be used to obtain a better understanding of acceptability of service robots by different people, resulting in the design and development of more effective intelligent controllers for service robots in the coming new generation.

scholarly journals Self-Calibration of Eye-to-Hand and Workspace for Mobile Service Robot

Robotics ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 1482-1499
Author(s):  
Jwu-Sheng Hu ◽  
Yung-Jung Chang
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Calibration Method ◽  
Industrial Robots ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Robot Arm ◽  
Self Calibration ◽  
Laser Distance Sensor ◽  
Distance Sensor

The geometrical relationships among robot arm, camera, and workspace are important to carry out visual servo tasks. For industrial robots, the relationships are usually fixed and well calibrated by experienced operators. However, for service robots, particularly in mobile applications, the relationships might be changed. For example, when a mobile robot attempts to use the visual information from environmental cameras to perform grasping, it is necessary to know the relationships before taking actions. Moreover, the calibration should be done automatically. This chapter proposes a self-calibration method using a laser distance sensor mounted on the robot arm. The advantage of the method, as compared with pattern-based one, is that the workspace coordinate is also obtained at the same time using the projected laser spot. Further, it is not necessary for the robot arm to enter the view scope of the camera for calibration. This increases the safety when the workspace is unknown initially.

Navigation of Semi-autonomous Service Robots Using Local Information and Anytime Motion Planners

Robotica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (11) ◽  
pp. 2080-2098
Author(s):  
Guilherme A. S. Pereira ◽  
Elias J. R. Freitas
Keyword(s):  
Obstacle Avoidance ◽  
Service Robots ◽  
Service Robot ◽  
Mobile Service ◽  
Global Localization ◽  
Time Coordinate ◽  
Local Path ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Autonomous Service ◽  
Localization Systems

SUMMARYThis paper deals with the problem of navigating semi-autonomous mobile robots without global localization systems in unknown environments. We propose a planning-based obstacle avoidance strategy that relies on local maps and a series of short-time coordinate frames. With this approach, simple odometry and range information are sufficient to make the robot to safely follow the user commands. Different from reactive obstacle avoidance strategies, the proposed approach chooses a good and smooth local path for the robot. The methodology is evaluated using a mobile service robot moving in an unknown corridor environment populated with obstacles and people.

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