Human-aware robot motion planning with velocity constraints

This paper addresses the issue of how high-speed robots may move among humans such that the robots complete their tasks efficiently while the humans in the environment feel safe and comfortable. It describes the Segway robotic platform used for this research and then discusses the three primary research areas needed to develop the human-aware motion planner. First, it is necessary to conduct experiments with humans to develop human aware velocity constraints as a function of the distance of the robot from a human. Next, these velocity constraints must be used to plan the robot motion in real time. Finally, practical implementation of this motion planner requires the ability to robustly detect humans using the available vision sensors. The approach taken to each of these problems is described in this paper along with preliminary results.