Person Following System for the Autonomous Mobile Robot by Independent Tracking of Left and Right Feet

Automatic person following method by independently tracking left and right feet parts is newly proposed. This method is applicable for small intelligent robot in near future, such as an automatic shopping cart. The proposed method consists of three parts. That is “Detecting and feature-learning of tracked person” part, “Searching lowest position of both feet” part, and “Robot control” part. The Condensation algorithm is utilized to robustly track both feet parts in conplex environment. Hypothesis (particles) are independently prepared for both left and right feet. Experimental results in indoor environment have shown the effectiveness of the proposed method.