Person-following controller with socially acceptable robot motion

MONTESDEOCA J; TOIBERO JM; JORDAN J; ZELL A; CARELLI R

ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2022 vol. 153

0921-8890

This work presents a novel stable controller for the person-following task that includes social considerationsfor a differential drive mobile robot equipped with an RGB-D camera and a laser rangefinder as main sensors. The proposed controller adapts its behavior based on the knowledge of both:a modified personal space distribution and human user velocity. Control objectives are focused henceon keeping the human user within the camera?s field-of-view while the mobile robot follows it, witha socially acceptable motion through arbitrary paths. To show the good behavior of this proposal,simulation and real experimental results are included and discussed. The asymptotic stability of theoverall system is proved through the Lyapunov theory. Also, in our proposal, three state-of-the-artalgorithms were integrated with the controller. In particular, a new real-time multi-person skeletaltracking system is used to obtain the relative human-robot position, a text to speech algorithm is usedto confirm the commands given by the human, and also, a SLAM algorithm is used to obtain the mapof the environment while the main task is being performed. Additionally, a hand gesture recognitionmodule is included to interact with the mobile robot. This way, the robot is allowed to navigatewith a socially-aware behavior in environments shared with humans. Finally, subjective and objectivemetrics are used as a validation method for human perception about the achieved robot motion.