Arnold: An Anthropomorphic Autonomous Robot for Human Environments

We describe the general concept, system architecture, hardware and the rst behavioral abilities of Arnold, a mobile autonomous service robot with a robot arm with seven degrees of freedom and a dual stereo camera head. Arnold is anthropomorphic for better adaptation to typical human environments and to allow for human-like behavioral strategies in solving complex tasks. Arnold was designed for service tasks like locating, recognizing and grasping objects in a rich initially unknown environment and to freely move in relatively small rooms with static and dynamic obstacles and conventional doors. Currently Arnold is able to xate, move to and grasp for a human hand and avoid obstacles based on optical ow analysis.