Tracking of Humans and Robots Using Laser Range Finders

摘要

There exist various applications where tracking of humans or robots in an area is needed. An example of such applications are Intelligent Spaces, where humans and robots share a common space and their positions are tracked by a system of sensors in the space. In this paper a system for tracking both humans and robots that utilizes laser range finders as sensing devices is described. The details of the extraction of objects from the laser scan, data association and estimation are given, and results of tracking humans and robots are described. Calibration of the distributed laser range finders, which is important for the operation of the tracking system is also described, both in a manual and automated variant and experimental results are given. Finally, the inclusion of a laser range finder onboard the mobile robot in the tracking process is described and accompanied with experimental results. The distributed fusion of static and onboard sensors is also discussed.