An autonomous mobile robot for known industrial environments

Although mobile robot navigation in unstructured environments is an open problem, robotic systems can be developed which operate in relatively unstructured but known environments. The Autonomous Robot for a Known environment (ARK) project has constructed an autonomous robot capable of navigating and carrying out survey/inspection tasks in a complex industrial environment. The ARK environment is an industrial factory oor, and therefore lacks the planar walls and well-de ned corridors of a typical o ce environment, where the majority of laboratory mobile robots operate. The ARK robot relies on naturally occurring objects localized with Laser Eye, a novel active vision sensor, as visual landmarks for navigation. This paper describes the overall structure of the ARK project, the technical results that it achieved, and the robotic systems it produced.