Localization Method for SLAM using an Autonomous Cart as a Guard Robot

In recent years, different robotic carts have been developed, and are suitable for use as transport, guide, and patrol robots on campuses or in buildings, or for event venues such as trade shows, with digital signage displays. These small robots move autonomously using a location information system, obstacle detection system, and maps. We focus on a patrol system for finding suspicious but harmless people such as aged wanderers. These suspicious people are found about once a year or a few times during events. Therefore, autonomous robots are useful for deterrence and to find the suspicious people. We assume that the patrol robots have global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) for their location information system, laser imaging detection and ranging (LiDAR) for obstacle detection, an infrared sensor for human detection, and a Bluetooth device to detect authorized humans. Moreover, we assume that event venues are outdoors and that there are many temporary booths. Therefore, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technologies are required. In this paper, we describe a localization method in an event space for SLAM. Moreover, we show the evaluation result of our proposed method.