Research On Navigation Technology For Indoor Walking Aid Robot

As the problems of aging and increasing human population, the number of elderlypeople and blind people is gradually increasing. The quality of elderly people and blindpeople’s lives is seriously affected by difficulties in walking and travel. Caring forelderly people and blind people also puts a heavy burden on families and societies.Therefore, it has become the consensus at home and abroad that studying and devisingthe walking aid robot with functions of localization, navigation, obstacle avoidance andHCI (human-computer interaction).In this paper, a kind of indoor walking aid robots which providing guidance andwalking aids has been studied. The walking aid robot’s applications are hospitals,airports and other public place. It uses ultrasonic network localization system andinertial navigation system with digital compass and encoders to realize localization andnavigation. And it uses ultrasonic in real-time obstacle avoidance, uses HCI systemcomposed of the voice module and the screen to communicate with users. This paperhas completed the design of the indoor walking aid robot.Firstly, The localization algorithm of the walking aid robot has been studied, usingan optimized localization algorithm based on trilateration measurement to process theultrasonic network localization data. And using the EKF(extended Kalman filter) to fusedata of each module.Secondly, Designing the localization and navigation system of the walking aidrobot, including the hardware and software design of the ultrasonic network localizationsystem, the dead reckoning system, the obstacle avoidance system, the HCI system andthe master control system. And completed the overall package and appearance design ofthe indoor walking aid robot.Finally, the experimental platforms have been set up. Four experiments completedunder the navigation system of the walking aid robot, including experiments ofultrasonic network localization system, experiments of dead reckoning with digitalcompass and encoders, and overall experiments of localization and navigation system.Huazhong University of Science and Technology has been carried out. The results showthat the system is able to achieve localization and navigation accurately, response the obstacle rapidly, recognize the voice sensitivity. The navigation system of the walkingaid robot has achieved the expected results.