Development of a tour guide and co-experience robot system using the quasi-zenith satellite system and the 5th-generation mobile communication system at a Theme Park

Kohei Matsumoto,Yasuhiro Kawauchi,Hiroyuki Yamada,Tamaki Nakamura,Akihiro Kawamura,Masato Imai,Ryo Kurazume

doi:10.1186/s40648-021-00192-7

Abstract

Autonomous robots are expected to replace dangerous, dirty, and demanding (3D) jobs. At a theme park, surveillance, cleaning, and guiding tasks can be regarded as 3D jobs. The present paper attempts to develop an autonomous tour guide robot system and co-experience system at a large theme park. For realizing such autonomous service robots used in our daily environment, localization is one of the most important and fundamental functions. A number of localization techniques, including simultaneous localization and mapping, have been proposed. Although a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is most commonly used in outdoor environments, its accuracy is approximately 10 m, which is inadequate for navigation of an autonomous service robot. Therefore, a GNSS is usually used together with other localization techniques, such as map matching or camera-based localization. In the present study, we adopt the quasi-zenith satellite system (QZSS), which became available in and around Japan in November 2018, for the localization of an autonomous service robot. The QZSS provides high-accuracy position information using quasi-zenith satellites (QZSs) and has a localization error of less than 10 centimeters. In the present paper, we compare the positioning performance of the QZSS and the real-time kinematic GPS and verify the stability and the accuracy of the QZSS in an outdoor environment. In addition, we introduce a tour guide robot system using the QZSS and present the results of a guided tour experiment in a theme park. On the other hand, based on the tour guide system, we also develop a co-experience robot system in a theme park, which realizes the sharing of experiences using an immersive VR display and the 5th-generation mobile communication system (5G). The robot is equipped with a 360-degree video camera and real-time 4K video is transmitted to a remote operator using the large communication capacity of the 5G network. The experimental results at a theme park showed that the guided tour experiment was successful and that the co-experience system allowed sharing of the experience with high immersion by a remote operator.

Highlights

The service robot is an effective solution for various social problems, such as the problems of a super-aged society, labor shortages caused by depopulation in the countryside, and performing uncomfortable tasks such as Matsumoto et al Robomech J (2021) 8:4Localization is one of the most important and fundamental functions for an autonomous service robot like the tour guide robot
Measurement accuracy in motion in an open‐sky environment In-motion experiments were conducted by the RTK-Global Positioning System (GPS) and the quasi-zenith satellite system (QZSS) equipped in mobile robots
In order to confirm the effectiveness of using the QZSS for the tour guide robot, the performance of the QZSS was examined, and its accuracy and stability were verified by a centimeter-class positioning system for autonomous service robots

Summary

Introduction

The service robot is an effective solution for various social problems, such as the problems of a super-aged society, labor shortages caused by depopulation in the countryside, and performing uncomfortable tasks such as Matsumoto et al Robomech J (2021) 8:4Localization is one of the most important and fundamental functions for an autonomous service robot like the tour guide robot. We introduce the configuration of a tour guide robot system using the QZSS and a co-experience system using the 5G network. We use MJ-2001-GL1 (Magellan Systems Japan Inc.; Fig. 3) as an RTK-GPS module in the experiment.

Results

Conclusion