Teaching a robot where objects are: Specification of object location using human following and human orientation estimation

Abstract

We propose a total method to specify object's position to a mobile robot using person-following. The user first moves toward the target object and the robot follows the person, recording the trajectory of the walk. After arriving at the target position, the robot identifies the position of the object by estimating the orientation of the person. Then the robot traces the trajectory from the origin to the target position, and finally the robot faces the target object. The estimation of the orientation of the person is performed by fitting an ellipse to the measurement of the laser range finder.