Abstract
Features such as safety and longer flight times render lighter-than-air robots strong candidates for indoor navigation applications involving people. However, the existing interactive mobility solutions using such robots lack the capability to follow a long-distance user in a relatively larger indoor space. At the same time, the tracking data delivered to these robots are sensitive to uncertainties in indoor environments such as varying intensities of light and electromagnetic field disturbances. Regarding the above shortcomings, we proposed an ultra-wideband (UWB)-based lighter-than-air indoor robot for user-centered interactive applications. We developed the data processing scheme over a robot operating system (ROS) framework to accommodate the robot’s integration needs for a user-centered interactive application. In order to explore the user interaction with the robot at a long-distance, the dual interactions (i.e., user footprint following and user intention recognition) were proposed by equipping the user with a hand-held UWB sensor. Finally, experiments were conducted inside a professional arena to validate the robot’s pose tracking in which 3D positioning was compared with the 3D laser sensor, and to reveal the applicability of the user-centered autonomous following of the robot according to the dual interactions.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been a noticeable and remarkable interest in using robots for indoor applications where robots and humans share the same space
To overcome the shortcomings of the abovementioned tracking systems, we introduced a UWB-based tracking system in this work, which is inexpensive and easy to deploy in a large indoor space without mapping the surrounding surfaces [26]
We presented a complete data propose and user position anywhere in a larger indoor space
Summary
There has been a noticeable and remarkable interest in using robots for indoor applications where robots and humans share the same space. Indoor flying robots are helpful in many fields, e.g., inventory logistics, visual inspection, interactive movie-making, etc., as they usually occupy unused over-head space and collaborate with humans in more flexible ways [5,6]. Typical flying robots, such as drones, can be harmful due to their powerful propellers when required to fly in close proximity to people [7]. They generally cannot fly for a long time without recharging and cannot carry a relatively heavy payload [8]. According to a study [9] on human–robot interaction (HRI) with flying robots, the lighter-than-air robots (LARs) are more accepted by humans than drones as they generate less noise and have a friendly appearance
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