Automatic Lighting System Using Multiple Robotic Lamps

An automatic lighting system using 3-DOF robotic lamps and a laser scanner is proposed in this paper. The 3-DOF robotic lamp, which is designed with a spherical parallel mechanism with a unique forward kinematic solution, has a tilting motion to track a person and zoom-in and zoom-out motions to control the light intensity. In order to minimize the dynamic load, three actuators are installed at the base frame, and a counterbalancing design is considered. The positions of people are detected by a laser scanner, and the Kalman filter and a data association algorithm are applied in order to track the positions of people accurately. Therefore, multiple robotic lamps can track and illuminate each person continuously. We demonstrate experimentally that three robotic lamps mounted on the ceiling illuminate three people independently and control the intensity of the light according to the distance between a person and the robotic lamp.