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Single 2D lidar based follow-me of mobile robot on hilly terrains

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Abstract

It would be a very challenging task for mobile robot to track a person walking ahead on hilly terrains with a 2D lidar sensor instead of a 3D lidar or a rotating 2D lidar sensor. But it is clear that the 2D lidar based method is much more efficient in terms of computational costs and sensor cost only. For successful leader-following of the mobile robot with the 2D lidar sensor on such hilly roads, it is necessary to develop a classifier capable of recognizing a specific body part of the leader differently from other parts. In this study, the Mahalanobis distance kernel based on two features extracted from the leader’s torso profiles is used to construct the elliptical decision boundaries for the classification problem. In addition, based on that classifier, the roll and pitch angle of the 2D lidar sensor are controlled to continuously track the leader’s body part and to estimate the relative distance between the leader and the robot. As a result, even when the leader walks along paths with flat-to-hill transitions in day and night, the mobile robot successfully follows the leader with 80 % detection rate by stable pitching not exceed 1° of the 2D lidar sensor for keeping the torso inside its field of view. The proposed approach will be useful to improve the performances of multi-sensor based leader detection system using not only lidar sensor but also vision sensor with switching control scheme.

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Abbreviations

{S}:

Spatial coordinate frame

{B}:

Body coordinate frame attached to the mobile robot

{T}:

Tool coordinate frame attached to the LRF

W:

Width of human torso profile scanned by the lidar

G:

Girth of human torso profile scanned by the lidar

σ XY :

Covariance of X and Y

d follow :

Designated distance between the leader and the following robot

θ1, θ2 :

Angular position of 2-DOF module motors

θp :

Pitching motion profile for pitching motion of LRF

R XY :

Rotation matrix of body coordinate frame {Y} relative to spatial coordinate frame {X}

J XY :

Configuration-dependent matrix that maps the joint velocities

\(\omega _{XY}^z\) :

Instantaneous angular velocity of body coordinate frame {Y} relative to spatial coordinate frame {X}, expressed in {Z}

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea, funded by the Ministry of Education [2014R1A1A2055 334]. This work supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. NRF-2019R1F1A1045834).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Jihoon Kim

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea

    Hyungjin Jeong & Donghun Lee

Authors
  1. Jihoon Kim
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  2. Hyungjin Jeong
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  3. Donghun Lee
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Donghun Lee.

Additional information

Jihoon Kim received his B.S. degree in 2012 from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, He is currently a Staff Engineer of Samsung Electronics Mechanical Development Core Technology R&D Team.

Hyungjin Jeong received his B.S. degree in 2014 from the School of Mechanical Engineering, Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea, where he is currently working toward his Master’s degree.

Donghun Lee received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Soongsil University, Korea, in 2004, and his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University, Korea, in 2009. He is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Soongsil University, Korea. His current research interests include field robots, human motion recognition, machine learning and redundant mechanism.

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Kim, J., Jeong, H. & Lee, D. Single 2D lidar based follow-me of mobile robot on hilly terrains. J Mech Sci Technol 34, 3845–3854 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-020-0835-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-020-0835-7

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