Robot designed for socially acceptable navigation

Autonomous (self-driving) vehicles are increasingly being tested on highways and city streets. But there is also a need for robots that can navigate through environments like sidewalks, buildings, and hallways. In these situations, the robots must interact and cooperate with pedestrians in a socially acceptable manner. The "rules of the road" no longer apply -- there are no lanes or street signs, and pedestrians don't use turn signals when cutting through crowds. This thesis describes the hardware and software architecture of a robot that was developed for this application. This thesis also proposes a 2nd generation robot with tighter budget and size constraints. Finally, this thesis presents a novel collision avoidance method that extends the Reciprocal Velocity Obstacle (RVO) framework to consider the impact of planning decisions on future world states.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Everett, Michael F

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jonathan P. How.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111698

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/111698