Building topological maps by looking at people: an example of cooperation between intelligent spaces and robots

Intelligent spaces are rooms or areas that are equipped with sensors such as microphones or cameras that enable them to perceive what is happening in them. In such spaces that have an intelligence of their own a world model no longer is something the robot has alone but a service offered by the information infrastructure of the space. In this article we show how such an intelligent space can generate a topological map for robots by looking at the movements of people in the room. We describe the stereo vision system that is capable of tracking the 3D movements of several humans in real time and give experimental results obtained in a real-world environment with several people