Ascending stairway modeling: A first step toward autonomous multi-floor exploration

Jeffrey A. Delmerico, Jason J. Corso, David Baran, Philip David, Julian Ryde

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many robotics platforms are capable of ascending stairways, but all existing approaches for autonomous stair climbing use stairway detection as a trigger for immediate traversal. In the broader context of autonomous exploration, the ability to travel between floors of a building should be compatible with path planning, such that the robot can traverse a stairway at a time that is appropriate to its navigation goals. No system yet presented is capable of both localizing stairways on a map and estimating their properties, functions that in combination would enable stairways to be considered as traversable terrain in a path planning algorithm. We propose a method for modeling stairways as objects and localizing them on a map, such that they can be subsequently traversed if they are of dimensions that the robotic platform is capable of climbing. Our system consists of two parts: a computationally efficient detector that leverages geometric cues from depth imagery to detect sets of ascending stairs, and a stairway modeler that uses multiple detections to infer the location and parameters of a stairway that is discovered during exploration. This video demonstrates the performance of the system in a number of real-world situations, modeling and localizing a variety of stairway types in both indoor and outdoor environments.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2012
Pages4806-4807
Number of pages2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event25th IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Robotics and Intelligent Systems, IROS 2012 - Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal
Duration: 7 Oct 201212 Oct 2012

Publication series

NameIEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
ISSN (Print)2153-0858
ISSN (Electronic)2153-0866

Conference

Conference25th IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Robotics and Intelligent Systems, IROS 2012
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityVilamoura, Algarve
Period7/10/1212/10/12

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