An autonomous 9-DOF mobile-manipulator system for in situ 3D object modeling

This video presents an autonomous 9-DOF mobile-manipulator system for 3D modeling of objects in situ. The system consists of a mobile manipulator - a powerbot mobile base with a six degrees of freedom (DOF) powercube arm mounted on it. The arm is equipped with a wrist mounted line-scan range sensor, and the powerbot also has a line scan range sensor mounted on it. The task is to autonomously build 3D model of an object in situ. The system assumes no knowledge of either the object or the rest of the workspace of the robot. The overall planner integrates two next best view (NBV) algorithms, one for modeling and the other for exploration, along with a sensor-based roadmap planner for the manipulator and costmap-based planner for the mobile base. We have implemented the system and this video show that system is able to autonomously build a 3D point cloud model of an object in an unknown environment.