Tracking control of human-following robot with sonar sensors

Abstract

Human-following has become one of the most import functions as to human-friendly robots that are able to coexist with humans and serve humans. In this paper, we propose a tracking control strategy for a human-following robot which applies a sonar ring as its rangefinder to detect human and obstacles. In order to detect human, we equip the human with a guiding device. The tracking control strategy consists of firing strategy and human-following and obstacle-avoiding strategy. Firing strategy can reduce crosstalk effectively. Human-following and obstacle-avoiding strategy ensure that the robot can follow human in a constant following distance with an appropriate orientation and avoiding obstacles under unknown environments.