Automated Destination Renewal Process for Location-Based Robot Errands

In this paper, we propose a new approach for service robots to perform delivery tasks in indoor environments, including map-building and the automatic renewal of destinations for navigation. The first step involves converting the available floor plan (i.e., CAD drawing) of a new space into a grid map that the robot can navigate. The system then segments the space in the map and generates movable initial nodes through a generalized Voronoi graph (GVG) thinning process. As the second step, we perform room segmentation from the grid map of the indoor environment and classify each space. Next, when the delivery object is recognized while searching the set space using the laser and RGB-D sensor, the system automatically updates itself to a position that makes it easier to grab objects, taking into consideration geometric relationships with surrounding obstacles. Also, the system supports the robot to autonomously explore the space where the user’s errand can be performed by hierarchically linking recognized objects and spatial information. Experiments related to map generation, estimating space from the recognized objects, and destination node updates were conducted from CAD drawings of buildings with actual multiple floors and rooms, and the performance of each stage of the process was evaluated. From the quantitative evaluation of each stage, the proposed system confirmed the potential of partial automation in performing location-based robot services.