Abstract
Person following with mobile robots has traditionally been an important research topic. It has been solved, in most cases, by the use of machine vision or laser rangefinders. In some special circumstances, such as a smoky environment, the use of optical sensors is not a good solution. This paper proposes and compares alternative sensors and methods to perform a person following in low visibility conditions, such as smoky environments in firefighting scenarios. The use of laser rangefinder and sonar sensors is proposed in combination with a vision system that can determine the amount of smoke in the environment. The smoke detection algorithm provides the robot with the ability to use a different combination of sensors to perform robot navigation and person following depending on the visibility in the environment.
Highlights
Person following performed by a robot has traditionally been an important research topic in the machine vision area
The results obtained from the experiments made using the three methods described above (Sonar Ring following, Laser Range Finder following and Sonar time difference of arrival (TDoA)) are discussed
It is important to take into account that in some special circumstances, such as a smoky environment, the use of optical sensors is not a good solution
Summary
Person following performed by a robot (see Figure 1) has traditionally been an important research topic in the machine vision area. The third method uses a previous work based on a combination of radio and ultrasonic sensors to measure distances and carries out a follow strategy that provides good results even in low visibility conditions. The algorithm calculates the robot movements in order to maintain the followed person at the predefined distance, using the measures obtained by all the sonar sensors in the ring In this configuration, a Hokuyo URG-04LX laser range-finder [12] is used to detect the legs of the person and carries out a follow strategy using a pattern detection [13] (see Figure 9 left). The human carries a transmitter ring of ultrasound sensors (see Figure 10 right), following the same principle described above
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