Human-aware robot navigation: A survey

Navigation is a basic skill for autonomous robots. In the last years human–robot interaction has become an important research field that spans all of the robot capabilities including perception, reasoning, learning, manipulation and navigation. For navigation, the presence of humans requires novel approaches that take into account the constraints of human comfort as well as social rules. Besides these constraints, putting robots among humans opens new interaction possibilities for robots, also for navigation tasks, such as robot guides. This paper provides a survey of existing approaches to human-aware navigation and offers a general classification scheme for the presented methods.     

Multi robot collision avoidance in a shared workspace

This paper presents a decentralised human-aware navigation algorithm for shared human–robot work-spaces based on the velocity obstacles paradigm. By extending our previous work on collision avoidance, we are able to include and avoid static and dynamic obstacles, no matter whether they are induced by other robots and humans passing through. Using various cost maps and Monte Carlo sampling with different cost factors accounting for humans and robots, the approach allows human workers to use the same navigation space as robots. It does not rely on any external positioning sensors and shows its feasibility even in densely packed environments.     

Bi-directional navigation intent communication using spatial augmented reality and eye-tracking glasses for improved safety in human–robot interaction

Safety, legibility and efficiency are essential for autonomous mobile robots that interact with humans. A key factor in this respect is bi-directional communication of navigation intent, which we focus on in this article with a particular view on industrial logistic applications. In the direction robot-to-human, we study how a robot can communicate its navigation intent using Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) such that humans can intuitively understand the robot’s intention and feel safe in the vicinity of robots. We conducted experiments with an autonomous forklift that projects various patterns on the shared floor space to convey its navigation intentions. We analyzed trajectories and eye gaze patterns of humans while interacting with an autonomous forklift and carried out stimulated recall interviews (SRI) in order to identify desirable features for projection of robot intentions. In the direction human-to-robot, we argue that robots in human co-habited environments need human-aware task and motion planning to support safety and efficiency, ideally responding to people’s motion intentions as soon as they can be inferred from human cues. Eye gaze can convey information about intentions beyond what can be inferred from the trajectory and head pose of a person. Hence, we propose eye-tracking glasses as safety equipment in industrial environments shared by humans and robots. In this work, we investigate the possibility of human-to-robot implicit intention transference solely from eye gaze data and evaluate how the observed eye gaze patterns of the participants relate to their navigation decisions. We again analyzed trajectories and eye gaze patterns of humans while interacting with an autonomous forklift for clues that could reveal direction intent. Our analysis shows that people primarily gazed on that side of the robot they ultimately decided to pass by. We discuss implications of these results and relate to a control approach that uses human gaze for early obstacle avoidance.     

单目视觉移动机器人导航算法研究现状及趋势

拥有自主导航能力的移动机器人在救灾、家政等人类生活中使用得愈加广泛。单目视觉导航算法作为机器人视觉导航中的一种,具有成本低、距离不受限的优势,但仍存在尺度不确定性和初始化问题。该综述根据对移动机器人的运动性质研究,主要从障碍检测、空间定位、路径规划三个方面对单目视觉导航技术进行了模块化分析,并以单目视觉导航算法的关键技术迭代与发展为脉络,对各模块的典型算法进行分析,从速度、准确性、鲁棒性等方面对不同算法进行综合性评比,并对算法存在的主要问题与难点进行剖析,结合人类对移动机器人能力的需求和移动机器人的技术状态对单目视觉导航技术的未来发展趋势进行预测。     

基于深度强化学习的室内视觉局部路径规划

传统的机器人局部路径规划方法多为已有先验地图的情况设计,导致其在与视觉(simultaneous localization and mapping, SLAM)结合的导航中效果不佳。为此传统的机器人局部路径规划方法多为已有先验地图的情况设计,导致其在与视觉SLAM结合的导航中效果不佳。为此,本文提出一种基于深度强化学习的视觉局部路径规划策略。首先,基于视觉同时定位与建图(SLAM)技术建立周围环境的栅格地图,并使用A*算法规划全局路径;其次,综合考虑避障、机器人行走效率、位姿跟踪等问题,构建基于深度强化学习的局部路径规划策略,设计以前进、左转、右转为基本元素的离散动作空间,以及基于彩色图、深度图、特征点图等视觉观测的状态空间,利用近端策略优化(proximal policy optimization, PPO)算法学习和探索最佳状态动作映射网络。Habitat仿真平台运行结果表明,所提出的局部路径规划策略能够在实时创建的地图上规划出一条最优或次优路径。相比于传统的局部路径规划算法,平均成功率提高了53.9%,位姿跟踪丢失率减小了66.5%,碰撞率减小了30.1%。     

A Bioinspired Neural Network for Real-Time Concurrent Map Building and Complete Coverage Robot Navigation in Unknown Environments

Complete coverage navigation (CCN) requires a special type of robot path planning, where the robots should pass every part of the workspace. CCN is an essential issue for cleaning robots and many other robotic applications. When robots work in unknown environments, map building is required for the robots to effectively cover the complete workspace. Real-time concurrent map building and complete coverage robot navigation are desirable for efficient performance in many applications. In this paper, a novel neural-dynamics-based approach is proposed for real-time map building and CCN of autoxnomous mobile robots in a completely unknown environment. The proposed model is compared with a triangular-cell-map-based complete coverage path planning method (Oh , 2004) that combines distance transform path planning, wall-following algorithm, and template-based technique. The proposed method does not need any templates, even in unknown environments. A local map composed of square or rectangular cells is created through the neural dynamics during the CCN with limited sensory information. From the measured sensory information, a map of the robot's immediate limited surroundings is dynamically built for the robot navigation. In addition, square and rectangular cell map representations are proposed for real-time map building and CCN. Comparison studies of the proposed approach with the triangular-cell-map-based complete coverage path planning approach show that the proposed method is capable of planning more reasonable and shorter collision-free complete coverage paths in unknown environments.      

考虑共同关注区域静态交谈群组检测的机器人导航及行为评价

针对静态交谈群组,提出了一种基于共同关注区域的F型社交关系（F-formation）检测算法。该算法将行人的位置、方向作为输入构造群组的共同关注区域,采用一个基于滑动窗口的最大值滤波器检测群组中心,然后根据群组中心进行群组聚类。在实现静态交谈群组检测的基础上,构造群组舒适空间,并基于多层代价地图机制将群组舒适空间模型应...     

基于人脸识别与光流追踪的移动机器人视觉导航方法

针对移动机器人视觉导航中跟踪目标丢失的问题,提出了基于人脸识别与稀疏光流算法(KLT)结合的移动机器人视觉导航方法(FR-KLT视觉导航方法)。采用OpenCV库中的Haar特征提取人脸识别算法实时检测识别目标人脸,通过Harris角点检测获取目标人体特征点,对目标人体进行精准定位;KLT光流追踪法测算目标移动趋势,并预测目标下一刻大致位置。目标人体位置变动时移动机器人对目标进行实时追踪导航。通过Pioneer-LX机器人在真实环境下试验,验证了该方法准确识别并跟踪目标的实时性和有效性。     

一个基于全景视觉的移动机器人导航系统的设计与实现

针对移动机器人路径规划与导航的实际应用,设计了一个基于全景视觉的移动机器人路径规划导航系统．首先,对导航系统的体系结构和功能进行描述．然后,分别就如何采用全景视觉传感器进行环境探索与地图创建,基于回归神经网络的广度优先搜索法和Voronoi骨架图法两种路径规划算法原理,以及如何实现按规划路径实施导航这三个方面进行了详细阐述．最后,结合实际机器人进行导航实验,评估导航系统的性能和路径规划算法的有效性．     

FOV Constraint Region Analysis and Path Planning for Mobile Robot with Observability to Multiple Feature Points

In visual servoing tasks, it is an important problem to maintain the observability to feature points on objects, which are usually used to calculate the pose between objects and robots. In particular, when the robot’s vision has a limited field of view (FOV) and the points on objects are distributed separately, the problem is more serious. In this paper, based on FOV constraint region analysis and path planning, we propose a novel method for a mobile robot equipped with a pan-tilt camera to keep all points on objects in its view. According to the Horizontal-FOV and Vertical-FOV angular aperture of camera, bounding boxes assisting to calculate the regions with FOV constraint are acquired firstly. Then the region where the robot inside it cannot keep all points in its view can be obtained. Finally the mobile robot plans a shortest path from the current position to the destination, which can avoid the region with FOV constraint. The results of simulations and experiments prove that our method can make mobile robot keep all feature points in its view when it is moving.

     

An autonomous mobile robot for carrying food trays to the aged and disabled

Our research objective is to realize sensor-based navigation for car-like mobile robots. We adopt the generalized Voronoi graph (GVG) for the robot's local path and a map representation. It has the advantage to describe the mobile robot's path for sensor-based navigation from the point of view of completeness and safety. However, it is impossible to apply the path to car-like mobile robots directly, because the limitation of the minimum turning radius for a car-like robot may prevent it from following the GVG exactly. To solve this problem, we propose a local smooth path-planning algorithm for car-like mobile robots. Basically, an initial local path is generated by a conventional path-planning algorithm using GVG theory and it is modified smoothly by a Bezier curve to enable the car-like robots to follow it by maximizing our evaluation function. In this paper, we introduce a local smooth path-planning algorithm based on the GVG and explain the details of our evaluation function. Simulation and experimental results support the validity of the algorithm.     

BA*: an online complete coverage algorithm for cleaning robots

This paper presents a novel approach to solve the online complete coverage task of autonomous cleaning robots in unknown workspaces based on the boustrophedon motions and the A* search algorithm (BA*). In this approach, the robot performs a single boustrophedon motion to cover an unvisited region until it reaches a critical point. To continue covering the next unvisited region, the robot wisely detects backtracking points based on its accumulated knowledge, determines the best backtracking point as the starting point of the next boustrophedon motion, and applies an intelligent backtracking mechanism based on the proposed A* search with smoothed path on tiling so as to reach the starting point with the shortest collision-free path. The robot achieves complete coverage when no backtracking point is detected. Computer simulations and experiments in real workspaces prove that our proposed BA* is efficient for the complete coverage task of cleaning robots.     

An algorithm for safe navigation of mobile robots by a sensor network in dynamic cluttered industrial environments

Mobile robots have been widely implemented in industrial automation and smart factories. Different types of mobile robots work cooperatively in the workspace to complete some complicated tasks. Therefore, the main requirement for multi-robot systems is collision-free navigation in dynamic environments. In this paper, we propose a sensor network based navigation system for ground mobile robots in dynamic industrial cluttered environments. A range finder sensor network is deployed on factory floor to detect any obstacles in the field of view and perform a global navigation for any robots simultaneously travelling in the factory. The obstacle detection and robot navigation are integrated into the sensor network and the robot is only required for a low-level path tracker. The novelty of this paper is to propose a sensor network based navigation system with a novel artificial potential field (APF) based navigation algorithm. Computer simulations and experiments confirm the performance of the proposed method.     

Research into the application of AI robots in community home leisure interaction

This paper focuses on comprehensive application of artificial intelligence robots for community-based leisure interaction. We propose a multiple-layer perceptron network to design and implement the intelligent interactive home robot system, which includes establishment of an environment map, autonomous navigation, obstacle-avoidance control and human–machine interaction, to complete the positioning and perception functions required by the robot in the home environment. With this system, community residents use an interactive interface to manipulate robots remotely and create an environmental map. In order for the robot to adapt in this changing environment, the robot needs to have a completely autonomous navigation and obstacle-avoidance-control system. In this study, a long-distance obstacle-avoidance fuzzy system and a short-distance anti-fall obstacle-avoidance fuzzy system were used to enable the robot to accommodate unforeseen changes. This technology proved itself capable of navigating a home environment, ensuring that the robot could instantaneously dodge nearby obstacles and correcting the robot’s path of travel. At the same time, it could prevent the robot from falling off a high dropping point and thereby effectively control the robot’s movement trajectory. After combining the above-mentioned multi-sensor and image recognition functions, the intelligent interactive home robot showed that it clearly has the ability to integrate vision, perception and interaction, and we were able to verify that the robot has the necessary adaptability in changing environments and that the design of such interactive robots can be an asset in the home.

     

A fast robot homing approach using sparse image waypoints

This paper proposes a fast image sequence-based navigation approach for a flat route represented in sparse waypoints. Instead of purely optimizing the length of the path, this paper aims to speed up the navigation by lengthening the distance between consecutive waypoints. When local visual homing in a variable velocity is applied for robot navigation between two waypoints, the robot's speed changes according to the distance between waypoints. Because long distance implies large scale difference between the robot's view and the waypoint image, log-polar transform is introduced to find a correspondence between images and infer a less accurate motion vector. In order to maintain the navigation accuracy, our prior work on local visual homing with SIFT feature matching is adopted when the robot is relatively close to the waypoint. Experiments support the proposed navigation approach in a multiple-waypoint route. Compared to other prior work on visual homing with SIFT feature matching, the proposed navigation approach requires fewer waypoints and the navigation speed is improved without compromising the accuracy in navigation.     

基于场景理解与改进型BUG算法的移动机器人避障

针对现有移动机器人在视觉避障上存在的局限,将深度学习算法和路径规划技术相结合,提出了一种基于深层卷积神经网络和改进Bug算法的机器人避障方法。该方法采用多任务深度卷积神经网络提取道路图像特征,实现图像分类和语义分割任务;其次,基于语义分割结果构建栅格地图,并将图像分类结果与改进的Bug算法相结合,搜索出最优避障路径;同时,为降低冗余计算,设计了特征对比结构来对避免对重复计算的特征信息,保障机器人在实际应用中实时性。通过实验结果表明,所提方法有效的平衡了多视觉任务的精度与效率,并能准确规划出安全的避障路径,辅助机器人完成导航避障。     

A faster path planner using accelerated particle swarm optimization

The idea of placing small mobile robots to move around in a large building to detect potential intruders has been around for some time. However, there are still two major hurdles to overcome: to locate itself in the environment and to make a decision on how to move around safely and effectively at a reasonable computation cost. This paper describes a mathematical model for developing a scheme for an autonomous low cost mobile robot system using visual simultaneous localization and mapping and accelerated particle swarm intelligent path planner. The results indicated that this system could provide a solution for the problem of indoor mobile robot navigation. Advances in computer technology make this technique a cost effective solution for a future home service robot.     

Real-time path planning of autonomous robots in a two-dimensional unknown dynamic navigation environment

This paper deals with the real-time path planning of an autonomous mobile robot in two-dimensional, unknown, dynamic multiple robot navigation space. In particular, a collision-free navigation path planning strategy is presented in real time by using a heuristichuman like approach. The heuristic scheme used here is based on thetrial and error methodology with the attempt to minimize the cost of the navigation efforts, when time plays a significant role. Past built-up navigation experience and current extracted information from the surrounding environment are used for the detection of other moving objects (robots) in the same navigation environment. Moreover, the determination of asecure navigation path is supported by a set of generic traffic priority rules followed by the autonomous robots moving in the same environment. Simulated results for two moving objects in the same navigation space are also presented.     

Visual navigation and obstacle avoidance using a steering potential function

Humans have a remarkable ability to navigate using only vision, but mobile robots have not been nearly as successful. We propose a new approach to vision-guided local navigation, based upon a model of human navigation. Our approach uses the relative headings to the goal and to obstacles, the distance to the goal, and the angular width of obstacles, to compute a potential field over the robot heading. This potential field controls the angular acceleration of the robot, steering it towards the goal and away from obstacles. Because the steering is controlled directly, this approach is well suited to local navigation for nonholonomic robots. The resulting paths are smooth and have continuous curvature. This approach is designed to be used with single-camera vision without depth information but can also be used with other kinds of sensors. We have implemented and tested our method on a differential-drive robot and present our experimental results.     

Path planning of fire-escaping system for intelligent building

We present the path-planning techniques of the fire-escaping system for intelligent building, and use multiple mobile robots to present the experimental scenario. The fire-escaping system contains a supervised computer, an experimental platform, some fire-detection robots and some navigation robots. The mobile robot has the shape of a cylinder, and its diameter, height and weight are 10?cm, 15?cm and 1.5?kg, respectively. The mobile robot contains a controller module, two DC servomotors (including drivers), three IR sensor modules, a voice module and a wireless RF module. The controller of the mobile robot acquires the detection signals from reflective IR sensors through I/O pins and receives the command from the supervised computer via wireless RF interface. The fire-detection robot carries the flame sensor to detect fire sources moving on the grid-based experiment platform, and calculates the more safety escaping path using piecewise cubic Bezier curve on all probability escaping motion paths. Then the user interface uses A* searching algorithm to program escaping motion path to approach the Bezier curve on the grid-based platform. The navigation robot guides people moving to the safety area or exit door using the programmed escaping motion path. In the experimental results, the supervised computer programs the escaping paths using the proposed algorithms and presents movement scenario using the multiple smart mobile robots on the experimental platform. In the experimental scenario, the user interface transmits the motion command to the mobile robots moving on the grid-based platform, and locates the positions of fire sources by the fire-detection robots. The navigation robot guides people leaving the fire sources using the low-risk escaping motion path and moves to the exit door.