Exploration of the environment with an active and intelligent optical sensor system

The exploration and mapping of unknown environments is on important task for the new generation of mobile service robots. These robots are supposed to operate in dynamic and changing environments together with humans and in interaction with other stationary or moving objects. This requires a high flexibility and adaptability of the sensor-system to changing environmental conditions. Sensors that are capable of providing the quality of information that is required for the described scenario are optical sensors like digital cameras and laserscanners. In this paper a sensor system and an architecture for active control of the sensors and adaptive processing of the perceived sensor data are developed for service applications and experimentally evaluated