Decentralized sensor fusion for ubiquitous networking robotics in urban areas

Abstract

This article is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license.-- et al. ; In this article we explain the architecture for the environment and sensors that has been built for the European project URUS (Ubiquitous Networking Robotics in Urban Sites), a project whose objective is to develop an adaptable network robot architecture for cooperation between network robots and human beings and/or the environment in urban areas. The project goal is to deploy a team of robots in an urban area to give a set of services to a user community. This paper addresses the sensor architecture devised for URUS and the type of robots and sensors used, including environment sensors and sensors onboard the robots. Furthermore, we also explain how sensor fusion takes place to achieve urban outdoor execution of robotic services. Finally some results of the project related to the sensor network are highlighted. ; This work has been supported by URUS, the Ubiquitous Robotics in Urban Settings project, funded by the European Commission (FP6-IST-045062), by CONET, the Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence (FP7-2007-2-224053), by the Spanish National projects UbRob, Ubiqitous Robotics in Urban Settings (DPI2007-61452) and PAU, Perception and Action under Uncertainty (DPI2008-06022) of the DPI program; and MIPRCV, Multimodal Interaction in Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision of the Consolider Ingenio 2010 program (CSD2007-00018); and by the project SIRE, funded by the Andalusian Government (P06-TEP-01494). ; Peer Reviewed