Necessary functions for autonomous mobile robots to plan a path when climbing up/down steps

Abstract

Recently, the technology of autonomous mobile robots has been actively researched and pratical use of it is expected in various mobility service fields. In a human living space, if a mobile robot move autonomously, it has to recognize the surrounding enviroments and plan a path from the start to the goal. In addition, it is also necessary to deal with obstacles. Especially, in case of a mobile robot with the ability to climb up/down steps, it is required to judge whether it can climb up/down steps and control the entering angle to steps. Our final goal is to propose a navigation system for autonomous mobile robots which can climb up/down steps. This paper reports necessary functions for a global path planning considering climbing up/down steps.