Grant: Engage Grants Program

Industrial robots have set important milestones in the era of automated manufacturing by carrying outdangerous and repeatable tasks in the place of humans for over half a century. In this century, professional andmobile service robots are going to play the key role as human counterparts and caregivers in both industrial anddaily-life setting. Similar to industrial robots, mobile service robots will take on the dangerous and dull aspectsof service tasks, freeing time and cognitive demand on human service worker, allowing the worker to makebetter choices in high level decision making and planning. In the context of indoor mobile service robots, as aprerequisite for performing a specific task, the robot must know how to locate itself and a target object. As aresult, the robot must be equipped with a navigation system that is capable of dealing with uncertainties insocial environments. Though foundation techniques exist, very few are found to be adequate in meetingmodern demands. Hence, the scope of this research project is to produce the next generation visual inertialodometry for robot navigation systems in dynamic indoor environments.