Conversationalist Robot in student cafeteria

Abstract

N.b.:In the wide upper panel, the position and trajectory marker (red lines and dots) are accurate according to the underlying grid. However, the projection of the video is offset slightly (due to camera curvature) from the tracks. This is an error in presentation; tracking error was almost uniformly within 1 foot of truth. A highly useful behavior of the robot was that it was always in motion. This was achieved safely by doing the following: if a collision was imminent, the forward velocity was set to zero. However, the rotational velocity was not set to zero. The navigation algorithm continued generating new plans (even though the forward velocity was held at zero until collision was not imminent), and each new plan potentially pointed the robot in a new direction. Indeed, the robot was searching for a way through a challenging crowd state.

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