The Novel 3D Measurement Method by Tilting Laser Range Finder on a Mobile Robot

Mobile robots such as security robots and automatic guided vehicles generally use Laser Range Finder (LRF) to detect surrounding objects. Detecting objects are used for avoiding obstacles by combining the detected information with a preliminary map given to the robot in advance. In general, the preliminary map for the robot is often created based on a floor map, and thus is often a 2D flat map. So, mounting the LRF horizontally to the ground on the robot. On the other hand, the robot cannot detect objects lower than the height from the ground to LRF, and there is a risk of conflict. In this paper, we propose to tilt the LRF in order to detect objects lower than the position where LRF mounted and terrain such as slopes and stairs. When LRF is tilted, the measurement surface also be tilted, and the robot moves to get multiple measurement surfaces and gets 3D measurement. And in this paper, we have experiment and show the performance of the proposed method.