Human Following Control of Porter Robot With Velocity Vectors Available to Purchase

The purpose of this paper is to develop human following control method of a porter robot in order to support workers in carrying heavy loads. This paper describes how to control human following method by calculating velocity vectors using the data obtained from ultrasonic sensors and by applying the inverse kinematics to wheeled skid-steering mobile robot. We adopt control method in constructing porter robot to support repair operations of asphalt pavements. As repair operations of asphalt pavements are performed in limited space, it will be necessary to restrict the movements of the robot as well. In this study, we adopted the self-localization by using odometory in order to limit the moving area of the robot. The experimental results indicated that the proposed method were effective in following humans even with a limitation on the moving area.