Building a grid-semantic map for the navigation of service robots through human–robot interaction

Abstract

This paper presents an interactive approach to the construction of a grid-semantic map for the navigation of service robots in an indoor environment. It is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework and contains four modules, namely Interactive Module, Control Module, Navigation Module and Mapping Module. Three challenging issues have been focused during its development: (i) how human voice and robot visual information could be effectively deployed in the mapping and navigation process; (ii) how semantic names could combine with coordinate data in an online Grid-Semantic map; and (iii) how a localization–evaluate–relocalization method could be used in global localization based on modified maximum particle weight of the particle swarm. A number of experiments are carried out in both simulated and real environments such as corridors and offices to verify its feasibility and performance.