Robot Companion
Current mobile systems from service and social robotics often require a lot of hardware and are correspondingly expensive. This hinders a spread on the market. A simple and light system with low hardware requirements can help here.
In the Robot Companion project, a framework is being developed that can be used for the simple commissioning of robotic following and tracking systems. Mainly light hardware for example single-board PCs and sensor technology is used. In particular, 3D sensor technology is avoided. To compensate this, approaches with virtual depth are used. The framework offers a number of tracking algorithms based on varying sensor hardware, which are projected to be combined almost arbitrarily. The key to this are simple but effective sensor fusion methods, which are also available in the framework.
In addition to pure tracking, methods are also provided with which a mobile robot unit can track and follow a human operator. Light navigation and path planning methods are also provided for this purpose. Currently, scenarios with fixed and moving sensors have already been implemented in social situations.