Introduction to the robot town project and 3-D Co-operative geometrical modeling using multiple robots

This paper introduces the author’s research project called the “Robot Town Project”. Service robots, which co-exist with humans and provide various services in daily life, must have sufficient ability to sense changes in the environment and deal with a variety of situations. However, since the daily environment is complex and unpredictable, it is almost impossible with current methods to sense all the necessary information using only a robot and the attached sensors. One promising approach for robots to co-exist with humans is to use IT technology, such as a distributed sensor network and network robotics. As an empirical example of this approach, the authors have started Robot Town Project. The aim of this research project is to develop a distributed sensor network system covering an area of a block in a town in which there are many houses, buildings, and roads, and manage robot services by monitoring events that occur in the town. This paper introduces currently available technologies including an RFID-tag-based localization system, distributed sensor systems for moving object tracking, and object management systems using RFID tags. For the construction of 3-D geometrical models of large-scale environments, a measurement and modeling system using a group of multiple robots and an on-board laser range finder is also introduced.