Fachbereich
DESIGN INFORMATIK MEDIEN

The aim of the project is to develop a social robot navigation system. The robot acts as a guiding companion and guides the user to their destination by providing instructions. One application example is the navigation through a foyer, which represents a social space with dynamic obstacles.

Navigation is divided into global and local navigation. Global navigation is concerned with planning the route from the start to the destination. Local navigation, on the other hand, is concerned with reacting to individual obstacles, such as groups of people. To be able to perceive these obstacles in our system, we use a fixed camera installation. This creates context awareness by tracking entities in the recording. The recognition of entities is done by YOLO. An important entity is the Sphero Bolt robot, which we have chosen as the navigation component for our prototype system. Its intentions must always be clearly communicated to the user during use. To achieve this the Bolt uses non-verbal means of communication such as a LED display and movement patterns. A clever combination of these components helps to humanize the Bolt and gives it a friendly character.

(Victoria Thee, Kevin Emunds und Finn Schindel / Prof. Dr. Berdux, WS 24/25)