A trial of autonomous long-distance outdoor navigation at 3.5km side-walk in university of Tsukuba

The purpose of this research is the development of a practical long distance navigation system of mobile robots in outdoor environment. We defined the research target as "An autonomous mobile robot runs on the sidewalk of 3.5km loop-street at Univ. of Tsukuba" and we have developed a experimental system for autonomous travelling in the defined environment. In the developed system, the route was divided into sidewalk sections and intersection sections, and the suitable methods were installed for both type of sections. In sidewalk section, the robot travels based on the road edge detection by laser range sensor, and in the intersections, the robot runs based on the teaching-playback scheme using the scan data by laser range sensor. In this paper, we explain the defined problem and the basic structure of the navigation system, We also report the experimental results in the defined route and discuss on this results with findings got from this research.