RGB-D sensor setup for multiple tasks of home robots and experimental results

While navigation based on 2D laser data is well understood, the application of robots at home environments requires seeing more than a slice of the world. RGB-D cameras have been used to perceive the full scenes and solutions exist consuming extensive computing power. We propose a setup with two RGB-D cameras that covers the need for conflicting requirements regarding localization, obstacle avoidance, object search and recognition, and gesture recognition. We show that this setup provides sufficient data to enable navigation at homes and we present how ROS modules can be configured to use virtual RGB-D scans instead of laser data for operation in real-time (10Hz). Finally, we present first results of exploiting this versatile setup for a home service robot that picks up things from the floor to prevent potential falls of its future users.