Acquisition and display of a world model using an autonomous mobile land robot

The systems "Reconnaissance and Obstacle Surveillance in Unknown Environments (ROSE)", "Simulated Environment for Real time Robot Operation (SERO)" are software modules which were developed at the Research Institute for Human Engineering. This research program was conducted to develop a human-machine interface capable of controlling one or more mobile robots in a test environment using an interactive mode of operation. One of the major issues was the autonomous operation of a vehicle in an unknown environment equipped with numerous obstacles. ROSE uses ultrasonic devices onboard the vehicle as sensors, generates a world model using statistical methods and transforms the digital map into a topographical map suitable for display in the console. It also contains software to guide the vehicle autonomously through the obstacle field using a real time path planner on the basis of the virtual force field method. The operator can select this topographical map or a visual simulation of the environment.