THE AUTONOMOUS MOBILE ROBOT SENARIO - A SENSOR-AIDED INTELLIGENT NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR POWERED WHEELCHAIRS

The SENARIO project is developing a sensor-aided intelligent navigatio n system that provides high-level navigational aid to users of powered wheelchairs. The authors discuss new and improved technologies develo ped within SENARIO concerning task/path planning, sensing and position ing for indoor mobile robots as well as user interface issues. The aut onomous mobile robot SENARIO, supports semi-or fully autonomous naviga tion. In semi-autonomous mode the system accepts typical motion comman ds through a voice-activated or standard joystick interface and suppor ts robot motion with obstacle/collision avoidance features. Fully auto nomous mode is a superset of semi-autonomous mode with the additional ability to execute autonomously high-level go-to-goal commands. At its current stage, the project has succeeded in fully supporting semi-aut onomous navigation, while experiments on the fully autonomous mode are very encouraging.