Abstract
In recent years, autonomous mobile robots are expected to perform in various fields, such as in a living space as well as in an industrial establishment. In some cases, to construct a combination of a line following robot system (which can run easily in a fixed course) and an autonomous mobile robot system (which can run in a wider area with robustness using comparatively complicated sensing and control system) seems an effective way to expand the whole running performance. On that premise, we are developing a virtual line following system referring to line segments consisting of laser range observation data, in order to make the navigation system towards autonomous running simpler and more steady. This paper presents the system concept, the configuration of a prototype, and the results of experiments which have been performed to evaluate the stability and repeatability of the virtual line following system.
