Robotic Blogs

The Mechatronics Group of the University of Waikato has developed a fleet of five mobile robots capable of autonomous operation. These robots are design to move on a variety of terrains including farms, forests, underwater and smooth indoor surfaces. MARVIN (Mobile Autonomous Robotic Vehicle for Indoor Navigation) is designed to act as a security agent for indoor environments. They are able to interact with people who may have little or no knowledge of robotic devices. This interaction must be made as natural as possible in order for the human to be comfortable communicating with MARVIN. To facilitate this, MARVIN has been substantially redesigned and provided with speech recognition and speech synthesis software as well as the ability to verbally and non-verbally convey emotional states. These emotion states can include actions like nodding or shaking of the head.

MARVIN is also equipped with different sensors to allow it to avoid obstacles. Different sensors are used to detect obstacles at different distance (short, intermediate and long). In operation, MARVIN scans its environment, waiting until it has detected a dynamic (moving) obstacle. Once this is confirmed, the laser ranger can help determine if this dynamic feature is possibly a human. If so, MARVIN approaches the “moving obstacle” and interrogates it. If it is a human, MARVIN expects an identification card to be shown. It then searches its database to find the owner of this card, and will prompt the user for his password. MARVIN will try three times to elicit the password from the user. If unsuccessful, MARVIN will become more aggressive (see diagram), and demand the user leave the premises. Although not implemented at this stage, the plan is for MARVIN to also notify a remote human security agent via the on-board wireless LAN that an intrusion has taken place, and send a picture of the intruder.