Rhino & Minerva:

Two Interactive Museum

Tour-Guide Robots
Wolfram Burgard
Universitt Freiburg
Institut fr Informatik
Autonome Intelligente Systeme
http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~burgard
burgard@informatik.uni-freiburg.de

People Involved
Michael Beetz
Maren Bennewitz
Armin B. Cremers
Frank Dellaert
Dirk Hhnel
Gerhard Lakemeyer
Charles Rosenberg
Nicholas Roy
Jamieson Schulte
Dirk Schulz
Walter Steiner
Sebastian Thrun

The Problem of Mobile Robotics

Sensor Data

Environmental Model

Robot Control
System

Actions

Tasks to be Solved by Robots

Planning
Perception
Modeling
Localization
Interaction
Manipulation
Cooperation
...

The Museum Tour-guide Projects

Idea: Let a mobile robot give tours to people in a museum.
Rhino:

Minerva:

Rhino
The Interactive Museum Tour-guide Robot

The Minerva Experience

Problems & Goals

Problems:
Sensor noise and uncertainty
Uncertain execution of actions
Complexity of state estimation problems
Goals:
Robustness
Reliability

The Robot and its Sensors

Problems & Challenges

unstructured environments
wide open spaces
invisible obstacles
high speed navigation
interaction
dynamic environments

Design Principles

Probabilistic representations and reasoning

Learning
Distributed, decentralized and
asynchronous decisions
Resource adaptability

Deutsches Museum Bonn

National Museum of American

History, Washington DC

Maps Used
Deutsches Museum Bonn

NMAH, Washington DC

Major Components of the

Control System

Probabilistic
Localization

Localization as State Estimation

l

Lt: position of the robot at time t

Given:

P ( st | Lt = l )

Map and sensor model:

Motion model:

Initial state of the robot:

P ( Lt = l | at 1, Lt 1 = l ' )
P ( L 0)

Data

dT = s1 , a2 ..., sT 1 , aT

Sensor information (sonar, laser range-finder, camera) oi

Odometry information ai
l

P( LT | dT )

Wanted:

Markov Localization Algorithm

l

Initialize belief Bel(L0) according to prior knowledge

Bel(Lt) is updated whenever

the robot moves:
Bel ( Lt = l )

P( L = l | a
t

t 1,

Lt 1 = l ' ) Bel ( Lt 1 = l ' ) d l '

the robot senses:

Bel ( Lt = l ) P( st | Lt = l ) Bel ( Lt = l )

Grid-based Markov Localization

Throw a three-dimensional grid over the sate space of the robot:

Motion Model

P ( Lt = l | at 1, Lt 1 = l ' )

Translational and rotational errors are

normally distributed
bounded
represented by independent distributions

10

Sensor models

P ( st | L t = l )

Ultrasound:

Laser:

Global Localization with

Laser Range-finders

11

Global Localization Using

Ultrasound Sensors
Trajectory and
ultrasound measurements:

Map of the environment:

Resulting Densities

12

Position Tracking
Odometry:

Corrected trajectory
using ultrasound sensors:

Global Localization

13

State Space Representations

Kalman filter
[Schiele et al., 94], [Wei et al., 94],
[Borenstein, 96], [Gutmann et al., 96, 98], [Arras, 98]

Piecewise constant
(metric, topological) (complexity O(|L|))
[Nourbakhsh et al., 95], [Simmons et al., 95],
[Kaelbling et al., 96],[Burgard et al., 96], [Konolige et al.,99]

Multi-hypothesis
[Weckesser et al., 98], [Jensfelt et al., 99]

Variable resolution
(trees) (complexity O(|L| log |L|)
[Burgard et al., 98]

Sample-based Density
Representation
Idea: Represent density by random samples

variable resolution
any-time
complexity O(N)

Monte Carlo filter, Survival of the fittest, Condensation, Bootstrap

filter, Particle filter
[Rubin, 88], [Gordon et al., 93], [Kitagawa 96], [Isard et al. 96, 98], [Kanazawa et al., 95]

14

Motion Model

Start

Using Ceiling Maps for

Localization

[Dellaert et al. 99]

15

Vision-based Localization

P(z|x)
z
h(x)

Next to a Light
Measurement:

Resulting density:

16

Under a Light
Measurement:

Resulting density:

Elsewhere
Measurement:

Resulting density:

17

Vision-based Localization Example

[Dellaert et al., 99]

Fast Internet Morning

up to 1.6 m/sec
Odometry only:

Vision:

Laser:

18

Localization in
Populated Environments
Problem: Changes in the environment lead to
unexpected measurements

Filtering Techniques
for Dynamic Environments
l

Assumption: We have a static map of the environment

Idea: Filter sensor data corrupted by dynamic aspects

Entropy Filter: Filter all sensor readings that increase
the uncertainty in the position estimation
Distance Filter: Filter all sensor readings that are caused by an
obstacle between robot and the closest map
obstacle in the direction of the sensor
[Fox et al., 98]

19

Effect of the Sensor Filter

Unfiltered sensor data

Filtered sensor data

Collision Avoidance
Task: Reactive avoidance
of obstacles
Problem: Obstacles that
could not be sensed
Solution: Model-based
Dynamic Window
Approach

[Fox at al. 98]

20

Path Planning as Value Iteration

robot

goal

Path Planning in Dynamic

Environments
Combination of a static
and a short-term map to
deal with dynamic
obstacles

21

On-line Mapping with Rhino

Coastal Navigation
Stay close to known objects to minimize future position
uncertainty.
Conventional plan:

Coastal navigation plan:

[Roy et al., 99; Roy et al. 00]

22

Mission Planning

Golog

Structured Reactive Controllers

[Hhnel et al. 97; Beetz et al. 99]

User Interfaces

On-board
Web-based

[Schulz et al. 99,00]

23

Finding People
walls, exhbits

people

Minervas Emotional States

angry

Get out of my way!

path blocked?

sad
path
free?

I need to get through

path blocked?

neutral

To give tours
I need space

path blocked?

happy

Could you please

stay behind me?

24

Minervas View

Typical Trajectories
Rhino:

Minerva:

25

Statistics (Rhino)
l

47 hours of operation

18.6 km total distance

> 2000 real visitors

2000 virtual visitors

Maximum speed: > 80 cm/sec

36.6 cm/sec average speed when in motion

more than 2400 requests completed

only 6 requests could not be completed

99.75 % reliability

How Intelligent Is Minerva?

36.9%

29.5%
25.4%

5.7%
2.5%
amoeba

fish

dog

monkey

human

26

Is Minerva Alive?"
69.8%

27.0%

3.2%

yes

undecided

no

Are
You Under
10 Years of Age?
Is Minerva
Alive?"
69.8%

27.0%

3.2%

yes

undecided

no

27

Current Projects

EU-Project TOURBOT
NURSEBOT
IST-project WebFAIR

TOURBOT in Athens

28

Setup Times
180
180
160
140
120
Days

100
80
60
30

40

1,5

20
0

Rhino

Minerva

TOURBOT

Conclusions
Mobile robots can navigate
- safely and
- reliably
- over longer periods of time.

Probabilistic techniques are the

key to robustness.
Going into the real world illustrates open
problems and stimulates new research
topics.

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