Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Taiwan University Students Build Tour-Guide Robot

Posted by timothy on from the to-your-right-to-your-left dept.

BobB-nw writes "A group of engineering students and their professor at National Taiwan University have built a robot that can map out the area it's operating in and offer guided tours. The robot, named 'Hsiao Mei,' uses laser mapping and GPS technology to navigate on its own, including around corners and obstacles such as tables and chairs. In the first public demonstration on Thursday, an engineering student with a wireless remote control first took the robot through the floor of a small museum on the university's campus so it could create a map for itself. After the initial run-through, the robot was able to make an unaided journey around the floor."

7 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Robot guide by Thanshin · · Score: 4, Funny

    "On your left, you may observe a thirteenth century representa... GZHRRRZT... ANNIHILATE HUMANS! ANNIHILATE HUMANS!"

  2. Re:GPS? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've worked on a similar project, but we avoided GPS, since it doesn't work very well indoors.
    What I want to know is if TFA is wrong, or if they're really using GPS. If it works fairly well, that would have made our lives a lot easier during my project.

    Synthetic indoor GPS is commonly used for robotics.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  3. Thats 10 year old news by bickerdyke · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news12995

    Thats the google query where you can find more articles about the project: http://www.google.com/search?q=roboter+baumarkt+ilmenau

    Sorry but obviosly that project was mainly covered in the german press.

    English Homepage: http://www.tu-ilmenau.de/fakia/Projects.2202.0.html?&L=1

    --
    bickerdyke
  4. Re:That's pretty cool. Roomba could use it! by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wonder what the name means in Chinese.

    Hsiao Mei (Wade Giles a deprecated but still common Romanization method in Taiwan) = Xiao3 Mei4 in Hanyu Pinyin = little sister.

    http://www.mandarintools.com/cgi-bin/charlook.pl?searchmode=standard&printtype=utf8&chartype=all&ordering=frequency&display=char&display=radstroke&display=strokes&display=pinyin&display=english&display=variants&display=unicode&english=&pinyin=&cantonese=&enctype=utf8&whatchar=%E5%B0%8F%E5%A6%B9&searchchar=Search+by+Character&lowerb=&upperb=

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  5. What is this? News for robots! by Nursie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or is it just robot season? We've had throwable robots, fleash-eating robots, evil robots, deceptive robots...

    Don't get me wrong, I love robots, it's just I've never seen so much robot related news in a week before.

    Bite my shiny metal ass.

  6. I'm actually quite surprised at this by AdmiralXyz · · Score: 3, Funny

    I had sort of assumed that all university tour guides were robots. They sure seemed that way to me.

    --
    Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
  7. SLAM by Beezlebub33 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The problem with this sort of article is that it doesn't say how the thing actually works. They are trying to solve the 'SLAM' or Simultaneous Localization and Mapping problem. The best approaches have recently been particle filter based. See the work by Sebastian Thrun at Stanford or Montemerlo's dissertation at CMU. I would have to guess that they are using a similar approach.
    But of course this has been done before. The discussed project looks very similar to Minerva.

    --
    The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.