Development of a housekeeping robot with visual servoing capabilities

In this paper we present some preliminary results of our project for developing a housekeeping robot, mainly focusing on its visual servoing capabilities to carry out three kinds of housework, namely, ldquoserve teardquo, ldquocarry the mailrdquo and ldquopick up ground objectsrdquo. We implemented an adaptive shape tracking algorithm which is used to detect the objects or landmarks by their color and shape features. Then using the sliding mode control technique, we implemented a visual servo controller to keep the robot tracking the object in the heading direction and within a constant distance. In addition, a manipulator mounted on the robot can be driven to perform the housework tasks in a pre-scheduled manner. For a natural human-robot interaction, we also try to provide capabilities of speech recognition and interactive spoken dialogue for the housekeeping robot.