Development Report:
Navigation of Autonomous Mobile Cleaning Robot SuiPPi
Tatsuo Sakai, Daisuke Nishimura, Hiroyuki Uematsu,
Ryosuke Murai, Koichi Mitani, Tomoharu Nakahara,
and Yukihiko Kitano
Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd., 1048 Kadoma, Osaka 571-8686, Japan
SuiPPi is a practical robot that underwent long-term experimental evaluation at Expo 2005. SuiPPi’s mission was to clean the Expo site, for example, the Global Loop main pedestrian loop. The Global Loop is about 2.6 km long, and 21 m wide, and has many curves and slopes and obstacles such as benches and vending machines. To execute its mission, SuiPPi had to solve two problems, – (1) moving autonomously over long distances around the loop to cleaning areas, and (2) cleaning areas not necessarily rectangular. SuiPPi navigation solved these problems by recognizing and adapting to the environment. The effectiveness of SuiPPi was confirmed.
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