Robox, a Remarkable Mobile Robot for the Real World

In this paper we present Robox, a mobile robot designed for operation in a mass exhibition environment. Robox is a fully autonomous mobile platform with unique multi-modal interaction capabilities and a novel approach to global localization using multiple Gaussian hypotheses. Here, we adopt an experimental view of the problem. After the problem specification of mass exhibitions, we outline issues regarding mechanical design, operating system, safety, software architecture and the mapping onto the multi-processor, multi-OS hardware. Finally, seen as an enabling technology of Robox, its localization technique is presented in detail. The localization approach is feature-based and addresses the data association problem with an interpretation tree using geometric constraints from the features. During tree traversal the constraints are used to form statistically feasible local-to-global associations resulting in a set of location hypothesis of unbounded accuracy. The method demonstrates robustness and practicability in an embedded system implementation. Ten Roboxes will guide hundreds of thousands of visitors through the Robotics pavilion at the Swiss National Exhibition Expo.02, ten and a half hours per day, seven days per week, from May 15 to October 21, 2002.