Where´s Robot?

Even before Karel Capek wrote his play R.U.R in 1920, scientists and engineers were trying to build robots. Today, many production robots are in highly successful use worldwide, building cars and similar products. Such robots are fixed in place so that their programmable motions can be repeated to the micromillimeter.

The challenge for a maintenance robot is somewhat different. A maintenance robot must move around a floor, avoid obstacles, and carry out its tasks of cleaning, painting, resurfacing, or similar operations. Factory floor or home floor, the difficulties are similar: Obstacles -- and knowing where they are.

Various solutions have already been tried to help a maintenance robot navigate. Terrain-following radar, wires buried in the floor, painted lines, the "pinball" random motion approach, and even GPS, rotating beacon triangulation, and ultrasonic rangefinding. None has proven satisfactory.

Hardware -- and software

The proposed hardware platform of the maintenance robot is about .5 meters square. It is equipped with a digital color camera, eddy current sensor array, and laser scanning contour mapper. The processor, operating system, and on-board memory are not disclosed.

The robot is intended for hard floor surfaces only. The developer´s belief is that the robot can build up a map of a concrete, tile, wood, or textured paved surface at 1000 points-per-inch resolution, created from photographs taken at 2" to 3" intervals. The robot would build a library of features -- cracks, pits, surface variations, and buried items such as pipes -- and set its coordinates relative to a starting location (call it "home base").

While navigating and performing its duties, the combined sensors of the robot should be able to use this map to identify its position "with sub-millimeter accuracy."

This North American organization is looking for software that would allow the robot to map and identify its position in this way.

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