Intelligent lead: a novel HRI sensor for guide robots

(in lingua inglese)

In this paper, we introduced the intelligent lead as a new HRI sensor. To detect the user’s hand position, we made a serial linkage consisting of eight rotary encoders and then we constructed the intelligent lead with the Kinect sensor, the serial linkage and MTi sensor as an IMU. Their measurements were fused by an EKF. A mobile robot was designed to test the performance of the proposed intelligent lead and the related positions are monitored by calculating in 3D with the OpenGL. Several tests were conducted to verify that the mobile robot with the intelligent lead is capable of achieving its goal points while maintaining the appropriate distance between the robot and the user. It is shown that the intelligent lead acquires a stable distance from the user to the robot, speed-control volume and turn-control volume on a real-time basis.