The ARK project: Autonomous mobile robots for known industrial environments

The ARK mobile robot project has designed and implemented a series of mobile robots capable of navigating within industrial environments without relying on arti cial landmarks or beacons. The ARK robots employ a novel sensor, Laser Eye, that combines vision and laser ranging to e ciently locate the robot in a map of its environment. Laser Eye allows self-location of the robot in both walled and open areas. Navigation in walled areas is carried out by matching 2D laser range scans, while navigation in open areas is carried out by visually detecting landmarks and measuring their azimuth, elevation and range with respect to the robot. In addition to solving the core tasks of pose estimation and navigation, the ARK robots address the tasks of sensing for safety and operator interaction.