Center for Healthcare Robotics, School of Integrated Technology, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 61005, Korea.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Mar 8;22(6):2093. doi: 10.3390/s22062093.
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.
特点,如安全性和更长的飞行时间,使轻于空气的机器人成为涉及人员的室内导航应用的有力候选者。然而,现有的使用此类机器人的交互式移动解决方案缺乏在相对较大的室内空间中跟随远距离用户的能力。同时,传递给这些机器人的跟踪数据对室内环境中的不确定性敏感,例如光强度的变化和电磁场干扰。针对上述缺点,我们提出了一种基于超宽带(UWB)的轻于空气的室内机器人,用于以用户为中心的交互式应用。我们在机器人操作系统(ROS)框架上开发了数据处理方案,以适应机器人对以用户为中心的交互式应用的集成需求。为了探索用户与机器人的远距离交互,通过为用户配备手持式 UWB 传感器,提出了双重交互(即用户足迹跟踪和用户意图识别)。最后,在专业场地内进行了实验,验证了机器人的姿态跟踪,其中 3D 定位与 3D 激光传感器进行了比较,并根据双重交互揭示了机器人根据用户为中心的自主跟随的适用性。