Development of Autonomous Mobile Robot that Can Navigate in Rainy Situations

[abstFig src='/00280004/02.jpg' width='300' text='Navigation under strong rainy condition' ] The Real World Robot Challenge (RWRC), a technical challenge for mobile outdoor robots, has robots automatically navigate a predetermined path over 1 km with the objective of detecting specific persons. RWRC 2015 was conducted in the rain and every robot could not complete the mission. This was because sensors on the robots detected raindrops and the robots then generated unexpected behavior, indicating the need to study the influence of rain on mobile navigation systems – a study clearly not yet sufficient. We begin by describing our robot’s waterproofing function, followed by investigating the influence of rain on the external sensors commonly used in mobile robot navigation and discuss how the robot navigates autonomous in the rain. We conducted navigation experiments in artificial and actual rainy environments and those results showed that the robot navigates stably in the rain.