Waiting with José, a vision-based mobile robot
Abstract
José is a visually guided autonomous robotic waiter. He circulates around a room
populated by groups of people, politely serving appetizers to humans.
The serving task combines elements of robotics with human computer
interaction, challenging control architecture with multiple task integration.
This paper describes our purely vision-based approach to this task.
Methods for mapping, localization and navigation are presented and discussed,
including issues of safety for both robots and humans. Our work on
human-robot interaction is covered, as well as our solutions to
various tasks specific to serving food. We present results of our
methods from sample experiments in our laboratory. We further discuss
our experiences at the 2001 AAAI mobile robot ``Hors D'oeuvres Anyone?''
competition, at which José took first prize.