Robot semantic mapping through wearable sensor-based human activity recognition

Semantic information can help both humans and robots to understand their environments better. In order to obtain semantic information efficiently and link it to a metric map, we present a semantic mapping approach through human activity recognition in an indoor human-robot coexisting environment. An intelligent mobile robot platform can create a 2D metric map, while human activity can be recognized using motion data from wearable motion sensors mounted on a human subject. Combined with pre-learned models of activity-to-furniture type association and robot pose estimates, the robot can determine the distribution of the furniture types on the 2D metric map. Simulations and real world experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is able to create a reliable metric map with accurate semantic information.