Paper ID: 2402.08897

RB5 Low-Cost Explorer: Implementing Autonomous Long-Term Exploration on Low-Cost Robotic Hardware

Adam Seewald, Marvin Chancán, Connor M. McCann, Seonghoon Noh, Omeed Fallahi, Hector Castillo, Ian Abraham, Aaron M. Dollar

This systems paper presents the implementation and design of RB5, a wheeled robot for autonomous long-term exploration with fewer and cheaper sensors. Requiring just an RGB-D camera and low-power computing hardware, the system consists of an experimental platform with rocker-bogie suspension. It operates in unknown and GPS-denied environments and on indoor and outdoor terrains. The exploration consists of a methodology that extends frontier- and sampling-based exploration with a path-following vector field and a state-of-the-art SLAM algorithm. The methodology allows the robot to explore its surroundings at lower update frequencies, enabling the use of lower-performing and lower-cost hardware while still retaining good autonomous performance. The approach further consists of a methodology to interact with a remotely located human operator based on an inexpensive long-range and low-power communication technology from the internet-of-things domain (i.e., LoRa) and a customized communication protocol. The results and the feasibility analysis show the possible applications and limitations of the approach.

Submitted: Feb 14, 2024