Approach to autonomous stair climbing for tracked robot

The problem of autonomous stair climbing has severely restricted the application of mobile robot indoor environment. We present an algorithm for autonomous stair recognition and climbing for tracked robot, which is based on depth data provided by Kinect v2 depth sensor. The control algorithm is composed of five sub modules, which are to explore the stairs, locate the stairs, calculate tilt angle of the stairs, climb the stairs, and land. Staircase model is a parallel line with a certain depth difference. The entire control algorithm has only two inputs: the distance D of the tracked robot relative to the stairs and the angle θ relative to the stairs. The two inputs are used to make the tracked robot in different sub modules. Experimental results have verified that the algorithm can solve the practical problems encountered in the application of indoor tracked robot.