RGB-D, Laser and Thermal Sensor Fusion for People following in a Mobile Robot

Detecting and tracking people is a key capability for robots that operate in populated environments. In this paper, we used a multiple sensor fusion approach that combines three kinds of sensors in order to detect people using RGB-D vision, lasers and a thermal sensor mounted on a mobile platform. The Kinect sensor offers a rich data set at a significantly low cost, however, there are some limitations to its use in a mobile platform, mainly that the Kinect algorithms for people detection rely on images captured by a static camera. To cope with these limitations, this work is based on the combination of the Kinect and a Hokuyo laser and a thermopile array sensor. A real-time particle filter system merges the information provided by the sensors and calculates the position of the target, using probabilistic leg and thermal patterns, image features and optical flow to this end. Experimental results carried out with a mobile platform in a Science museum have shown that the combination of different sensory cues increases the reliability of the people following system.