Specific person detection and tracking by a Mobile robot using 3D LIDAR and ESPAR Antenna

Abstract

Tracking a specific person is one of the important tasks of mobile service robots. This paper describes a novel and reliable strategy for detecting and tracking a specific person by a mobile robot in outdoor environments. The robot uses 3D LIDARs for person detection and identification, and a directivity-variable antenna (calledESPARantenna) for locating a specific person even under occluded and/or outof-view situations. A sensor fusion approach realizes a reliable tracking of a specific person in actual outdoor environments. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.