1Km autonomous robot navigation on outdoor pedestrian paths “running the Tsukuba challenge 2007”

This paper presents and describes the approach for achieving long distance autonomous navigation with a mobile robot on outdoor cluttered pedestrian paths. The task was to finish an event launched by the City of Tsukuba in Japan, called ldquoReal World Robot Challengerdquo, of navigating 1km autonomously in a real environment with real pedestrians and bicycles. The hardware, software and strategy for navigating in cluttered environments is explained. Moreover, the complementary functionality of the overall system where map-based and sensor-based navigation seamlessly change, is presented. The robustness of the system is validated with experimental results.