Description
This paper discusses the development of the multi-functional indoor service robot PSR (Public Service Robots) systems. We have built three versions of PSR systems, which are the mobile manipulator PSR-1 and PSR-2, and the guide robot Jinny. The PSR robots successfully accomplished four target service tasks including a delivery, a patrol, a guide, and a floor cleaning task. These applications were defined from our investigation on service requirements of various indoor public environments. This paper shows how mobile-manipulator typed service robots were developed towards intelligent agents in a real environment. We identified system integration, multi-functionality, and autonomy considering environmental uncertainties as key research issues. Our research focused on solving these issues, and the solutions can be considered as the distinct features of our systems. Several key technologies were developed to satisfy technological consistency through the proposed integration scheme.
Fig.1 shows the hardware configurations of three PSR systems. The PSR-2 is an upgraded version of the PSR-1, so they have similar configurations. The Jinny is a specialized version aiming at a commercial guide robot with a human friendly appearance.
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Figure 1. Hardware configurations of three
PSR platforms. (a) PSR-1 (b) PSR-2 (C) The Jinny.
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Fig.2 shows an example of navigation in a conventional office building. The start point is node0, and goal is node2 as shown in Fig.2.(a). Fig.2.(b) presents a planned path and an actual trajectory during the navigation. The robot's actual trajectory has the discontinuity which mainly results from position updates by the localizer. The robot can move smoothly since the behavior also contains several schemes for stable tracking such as an acceleration filter. Fig.2.(c) shows the results of localization. It represents the local map, laser scan data, reference data, sample distributions, and estimated position. The data for path planning and localization is gathered simultaneously with a single experiment. The reference measurements of an estimated robot location are mostly consistent with the scanned measurements of an actual robot position. It means that the accurate position estimation is accomplished. Although the environment is slightly changed and a user disturbs the Jinny's way, the proposed localization algorithms work successfully.
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(a) An experimental environment
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(b) A path planning example
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(c) A localization example
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Figure 2. Navigation examples.
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Four target tasks were successfully implemented to three PSR platforms.
A. A delivery task
Initially, a user commands a task by giving initial and destination
room numbers through the remote computer or the interface device on
the PSR. Then, the PSR navigates to the room where the target box
is. When it reaches in front of the room, it releases the trailer
and enters the room alone. After the PSR picks up the box, the PSR
leaves the room and places the box on the trailer. Next, the PSR docks
the trailer again and moves to the target room to place the box in
the pre-determined position. The last step is to return to the standby
state with trailers.
B. A guide task
The guide task was implemented into the Jinny platform since
a guide task inherently requires a human friendly appearance. The
guide robot Jinny is developed toward installation in the National
Science Museum of Korea. The Jinny autonomously navigated
the crowded environment and explained exhibits to visitors. A user
can select the scenario by selecting the sequence of exhibits to be
explained. The Jinny also provided several interesting services including
a simple game with visitors, and dance to the music, and following
visitors using laser range data.
C. A patrol task
The patrol task can be achieved without extra effort since only navigation
capability is required. The navigation behaviors developed for other
tasks are directly reused. For omni-directional surveillance, a pan
tilt camera and four web cameras are set up on the top of the PSR-2
as shown in Fig.3. The robot can broadcast camera images to the monitoring
station.
D. A cleaning task
The scenario of a floor cleaning is as follows. The robot is initially
loads the grid map of a target workspace, and then, divides it into
several sections if it is a large open space. It is more efficient
to divide the space into several sections than to cleaning it at one
process since the former is less affected by uncertainties of environments
like localization errors. Each section is swept by the full-coverage
cleaning algorithm based on the wall following technique. The robot
repeats these steps until the assigned workspace is fully covered.
Then, the robot moves to the next section to be cleaned. These processes
iterate alternately until the whole workspace is covered.
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Figure 3. Four target tasks. (a) Delivery
(b) Guide (C) Patrol (4)Cleaning
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Publication
Gunhee Kim and Woojin Chun, "Tripodal Schematic Control Architecture for Integration of Multi-Functional Indoor Service Robots," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (SCI), vol.53, no.5, pp. 1723- 1736, October 2006.
Gunhee Kim, Woojin Chung, and Munsang Kim, "Development of Range Sensor Based Integrated Navigation System for Indoor Service Robot ", Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems Engineering, vol.10, no.9, pp.785-798, October, 2004. (in Korean)
Gunhee Kim, Woojin Chung, Sangmok Han, Kyung-Rock Kim, Munsang Kim, and Richard H. Shinn, "The Autonomous Tour-Guide Robot Jinny", Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2004), pp.3450-3455, Sendai, Japan, September 28 - October 2, 2004. [paper] [presentation]
Gunhee Kim, Woojin Chung, Munsang Kim, and Chongwon Lee, "Implementation of Multi-Functional Service Robots Using Tripodal Schematic Control Architecture", Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2004), pp.4005-4010, New Orleans, LA, USA, April 26-May 1, 2004. [paper] [presentation]
Woojin Chung, Gunhee Kim, Munsang Kim, and Chongwon Lee, "Integrated Navigation System for Indoor Service Robots in Large-scale Environments ", Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2004), pp.5099-5104, New Orleans, LA, USA, April 26-May 1, 2004. [paper] [presentation]
Gunhee Kim, Woojin Chung, Munsang Kim, and Chongwon Lee, "Tripodal Schematic Design of the Control Architecture for the Service Robot PSR", Proceedings of the2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2003), pp.2792-2797, Taipei, Taiwan, September 15-18, 2003. [paper] [presentation]
Funding
- Development of Science Museum Guide Robots (Oct. 2003 ~ Feb. 2005)- Tangible Space Initiative(TSI) Technology Development (Jan. 2002 ~ Dec. 2003)
- Critical Technology-21, Service Robot Technology Development (Aug. 2001 ~ Aug. 2003)







