LEARNING WITH A FRIENDLY INTERACTIVE ROBOT FOR SERVICE TASKS IN-HOSPITAL ENVIRONMENTS

Our work addresses the problem of mobile robots control and programmin g. We present FIRST, a Friendly Interactive Robot for Service Tasks, d esigned to carry heavy loads in hospitals. A learning method is used t o teach it the set of all the trajectories it has to follow. During th e learning phase, a human operator teleoperates the robot while its se nsors are activated. So the trajectory is built according to these dat a. The teleoperation is easy and accurate thanks to several locomotion modes of the robot, specially a crab mode. A ''Learning Computer'' he lps the operator in any phase of the learning mode. As the missions fe asibility must be assumed, each trajectory will be checked before used . Furthermore, any learned trajectory can be linked to a trajectory ge nerated with the help of another method, provided that all files are o f the same kind. Eventually, while performing the mission, the robot c ompares the measurements provided by the localization system and the l earned points in order to ensure an accurate trajectory tracking.