Autonomous Exploration Using Kinect and Laser Range Finder

Autonomous exploration has received a large attention in robotic community. Recently, the low cost RGB-D sensor Microsoft Kinect has got more and more applications in mapping and localization, since it can provide abundant depth environment information in real time. However, the robot equipped only with Kinect sensor for autonomous navigation will face safety problems in complex scenarios. In this paper, we analyze the Kinect limitations and propose a system setup equipped with both Kinect and laser range finder in order to achieve a safety navigation in dynamic indoor environments. The Kinect is used for global navigation planning including target finding, best target choosing and path planning, while the laser performs local obstacle avoidance. The performances of map building and autonomous exploration are evaluated for two robotic platforms in lab environments to validate the proposed approach.