People Detection and Tracking Using LIDAR Sensors

• Main Authors: Claudia Álvarez-Aparicio, Ángel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras, Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Lera, Jonatan Ginés Clavero, Francisco Martín Rico, Vicente Matellán
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-08-01
• Series: Robotics
• Subjects: LIDAR; convolutional networks; people tracking; @home; robotics competitions
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2218-6581/8/3/75

The tracking of people is an indispensable capacity in almost any robotic application. A relevant case is the @home robotic competitions, where the service robots have to demonstrate that they possess certain skills that allow them to interact with the environment and the people who occupy it; for example, receiving the people who knock at the door and attending them as appropriate. Many of these skills are based on the ability to detect and track a person. It is a challenging problem, particularly when implemented using low-definition sensors, such as Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors, in environments where there are several people interacting. This work describes a solution based on a single LIDAR sensor to maintain a continuous identification of a person in time and space. The system described is based on the People Tracker package, aka PeTra, which uses a convolutional neural network to identify person legs in complex environments. A new feature has been included within the system to correlate over time the people location estimates by using a Kalman filter. To validate the solution, a set of experiments have been carried out in a test environment certified by the European Robotic League.