Home service by a mobile manipulator system -System configuration and basic experiments-

This paper describes a mobile manipulator system as a versatile platform for home service. Two key technologies are addressed in the paper. One is the efficient and easy recognition of environment about geometrical, physical and additional information by a sensor fusion system consisting of RFID, stereo camera and laser range sensor. The other is such geometrical, physical and additional information-based manipulation including mobile manipulation for the heavy objects cannot be handled up by the mobile manipulator. The system configuration is described and basic experiments show its effectiveness.

I. Introduction

In recent years, as relevant technologies have been rapidly developed, robotic technology becomes available to be applied into the fields outside of traditional industries. Among those fields, service robots have been noticed for improving the quality of human life in a wide range of potential applications. And economic and industrial experts expect service robots can make a new and huge market in near future.