Spencer the Robot Guides Lost Airline Passengers
"Meet Spencer. This armless automaton will begin a test run in Schiphol Amsterdam Airport at the end of the month, greeting and guiding harried travellers through the transport hub's famously confusing terminal system. Navigating it is so challenging, in fact, that KLM airlines donated a large part of the project's funding because so many of its customers were getting lost and missing flights. To ensure that doesn't happen anymore, Spencer is equipped with laser range-finding eyes and detailed maps of the airport's interior.
"Navigating an airport is challenging, there is a lot of glass and a constantly changing environment in terms of temporary obstructions, such as parked luggage trolleys and people everywhere," Achim Lilienthal, project leader at Örebro University which contributed to the research, said in a statement. "Objects that are temporarily permanent so to speak, are the most difficult to work around. We do not know, for instance, how long that luggage trolley will be parked in a particular spot, which makes it harder for the robot to determine its own location. We are working on a general map representation that includes and allows the robot to handle temporarily permanent objects."
Read the full article at its source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/26/spencer-the-robot-is-here-to-help-guide-lost-airline-passenger/
Read the full article at its source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/26/spencer-the-robot-is-here-to-help-guide-lost-airline-passenger/
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