Autonomously Climbing Complex Staircases and Traversing Ramps
We developed an approach to enable a humanoid robot to autonomously
climb up complex staircases. We first reconstruct a 3D model of the
staircase based on laser range data acquired with a humanoid. The
robot then globally estimates its pose in the 3D model, which is
subsequently refined by integrating visual observations. We use the
3D staircase model and the estimated pose to project edges
corresponding to stair contours into monocular camera images. By
detecting edges in the images and associating them to projected
model edges, the robot is able to accurately locate itself towards
the stairs and to climb them reliably.
Furthermore, we developed methods that enable a humanoid robot to
traverse ramps using only vision and inertial data for sensing.
The robot locates the beginning of the ramp using visual observations, walks down with regular corrections based on the inertial data, and finally determines the end of the ramp by detecting the ending edge before exiting the ramp.
Related publications:
- Improved Proposals for Highly Accurate Localization Using Range and Vision Data.
S. Oßwald, A. Hornung, and M. Bennewitz.
In: Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012. - NAO Walking Down a Ramp
Autonomously.
C. Lutz, F. Atmanspacher, A. Hornung, and M. Bennewitz.
In: Video Abstract Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012. - From 3D Point Clouds
to Climbing Stairs: A Comparison of Plane Segmentation Approaches
for Humanoids.
S. Oßwald, J.-S. Gutmann, A. Hornung, and M. Bennewitz.
In: Proceedings of the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS), 2011. - Autonomous Climbing of Spiral Staircases with Humanoids.
S. Oßwald, A. Görög, A. Hornung, and M. Bennewitz.
In: Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2011.
Videos:
The first two videos below show how the Nao acquires an accurate 3D model of the staircase and then autonomously climbs it up to the top. As can be seen, the robot moves its head to observe stair edges in camera images and accurately positions itself for climbing the next step. The last video shows the humanoid traversing a ramp using only vision and inertial data for sensing.