The development of an intelligent library assistant robot

In modern society, robots are been designed to play an increasing role in the lives of ordinary people. Among the emerging areas in robotics is the field of service robots. This paper describes a mobile robotic assistant, named 'LUCAS', Limerick University Computerised Assistive System that is currently been developed to assist individuals within a library environment while also socially interacting with them. Human-Robot interaction is initiated through a 3-D animated character displayed on the robots onboard p.c. A continuous localisation process is described which relies on monocular vision and ultrasonic range readings. The process involves dividing the navigable space into localisation variant regions, and employ's methods of landmark feature extraction, vanishing point estimation and ultrasonic pattern detection to localise the robot within each region.