Mobile manipulation for everyday environments

Robots are gradually being deployed for everyday environments, that is environments with no or very limited engineering taking place before deployment of the system. As manipulators and mobile platforms come together to deliver truly ubiquitous functionality the number of possible applications open up. The design of such systems require careful design of methods for navigation in dynamic environments, posture control, object recognition, visual servoing, grasp planning and integration. In this presentation a system for mobile manipulation in everyday environments will be discussed. The general design of the system will be outlined and the different component systems will be presented with a discussion of the alternatives for successful performance. Results from a real demonstrator system will also be presented to illustrate performance. Finally a number of challenges for the future in terms of basic performance, transfer of results and deployment will be presented.