Autonomous door opening and traversal

In order to access many spaces in human environments, mobile robots need to be adept at using doors: opening the door, traversing (i.e., passing through) the doorway, and possibly closing the door afterwards. The challenges in these problems vary with the type of door (push-/pull-doors, self-closing mechanisms, etc.) and type of door handle (knob, lever, crashbar, etc.) In addition, the capabilities and limitations of the robot can have a strong effect on the techniques and strategies needed for these tasks. We have developed a system that autonomously opens and traverses push- and pull-doors, with or without self-closing mechanisms, with knobs or levers, using an iRobot 510 PackBot® (a nonholonomic mobile base with a 5 degree-of-freedom arm) and a custom gripper with a passive 2 degree-of-freedom wrist. To the best of our knowledge, our system is the first to demonstrate autonomous door opening and traversal on the most challenging combination of a pull-door with a self-closing mechanism. In this paper, we describe the operation of our system and the results of our experimental testing.