Operation direction to a mobile robot by projection lights

Abstract

This paper describes the proposal of a novel concept for directing a mobile robot's motion by using human-operator lights. In addition, the construction of an experimental prototype, its operating system as well as results of some laboratory experiments are explained. Basically, the system architecture consists of a laser pointer and a flash light, whereby a target-object is brightened by a human-operator and an image is taken by an omni-directional camera. In such way that the position of the target object is showed to the mobile robot as for calculating its relative position by a vision system, and eventually the robot navigates towards the target-object direction.