Autonomous door opening and plugging in with a personal robot

Abstract— We describe an autonomous robotic system capable of navigating through an office environment, opening doors along the way, and plugging itself into electrical outlets to recharge as needed. We demonstrate through extensive experimentation that our robot executes these tasks reliably, without requiring any modification to the environment. We present robust detection algorithms for doors, door handles, and electrical plugs and sockets, combining vision and laser sensors. We show how to overcome the unavoidable shortcoming of perception by integrating compliant control into manipulation motions. We present a visual-differencing approach to highprecision plug-insertion that avoids the need for high-precision hand-eye calibration.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Wim Meeussen, Melonee Wise, Stuart Glaser, Sachin Chitta, Conor McGann, Patrick Mihelich, Eitan Marder-Eppstein, Marius Constantin Muja, Victor Eruhimov, Tully Foote, John Hsu, Radu Bogdan Rusu, Bhaskara Marthi, Gary R. Bradski, Kurt Konolige, Brian P. Gerkey, Eric Berger
• Keywords: Electrical Outlets, ICRA 2010, Office Environment, Robotics, Robust Detection Algorithms