Performance Evaluation of a Beach Cleaning Robot “Hirottaro 3” in an Actual Working Environment

Abstract

We have been developing a compact beach cleaning robot ”Hirottaro 3”. In order to collect small refuse effectively on a sandy surface, the robot was equipped with a mechanism that collected items as if humans clean a floor with a broom and dustpan. Furthermore, the robot was capable of traveling autonomously on the sandy beach that had insufficient natural landmarks by self-localization using poles and a scanning range finder. This paper reports the performance evaluation of refuse collection and autonomous navigation on the sandy beach.