Floor Sensing System Using Laser Reflectivity for Localizing Everyday Objects and Robot

Sensors

Yoonseok Pyo³  Tsutomu Hasegawa²  Tokuo Tsuji¹  Ryo Kurazume¹ 

[1] Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan; E-Mails:;Kumamoto National College of Technology, Koshi-shi, Kumamoto 861-1102, Japan; E-Mail:;Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan

关键词: laser range finder;    position measurement;    service robots;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s140407524

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This paper describes a new method of measuring the position of everyday objects and a robot on the floor using distance and reflectance acquired by laser range finder (LRF). The information obtained by this method is important for a service robot working in a human daily life environment. Our method uses only one LRF together with a mirror installed on the wall. Moreover, since the area of sensing is limited to a LRF scanning plane parallel to the floor and just a few centimeters above the floor, the scanning covers the whole room with minimal invasion of privacy of a resident, and occlusion problem is mitigated by using mirror. We use the reflection intensity and position information obtained from the target surface. Although it is not possible to identify all objects by additionally using reflection values, it would be easier to identify unknown objects if we can eliminate easily identifiable objects by reflectance. In addition, we propose a method for measuring the robot's pose using the tag which has the encoded reflection pattern optically identified by the LRF. Our experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.