Service robots can be used indoors for a wide range of tasks, such as cleaning, transportation of goods and guidance. However, their deployment in ball buildings are usually impeded by their lack of multi-floor navigation support. The already non-trivial task of moving from one floor to another is even more difficult in presence of more elevators one next to the other, because a LOP call could cause the arrival of any of them. Humans understand which elevator of the group arrives by using visual and audio cues. We can design a robot to behave similarly. More schematically, we want to teach a robot to detect: 1. which elevator has arrived at Its floor 2. in case multiple elevators arrive, which one wilt bring it to the correct destination all assuming no wireless interface between elevator and robot is present The functionalities we want the robot to achieve are the following: 1. Recognize the direction from which the sound made by an elevator comes when it arrives at the requested floor. 2. Detect an open door in order to verify that the elevator really arrived 3. Understand when it Is possible to enter the elevator. Such a technology could be both applied to a moving robot, providing him with the necessary information to move to the correct elevator for navigation purposes, and to a fixed panel which assigns the passengers to the best elevator for their trip.
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