HOMER - A High Speed Robot For Indoor Exploration

Abstract

This paper describes the design and development of a high-speed, lightweight robot for indoor exploration; HOMER (High-speed Obstacle Mapping and Exploration Robot). HOMER is designed to rapidly explore an indoor environment and generate 2D maps, using a stereoscopic camera as the primary range sensor. The focus of the HOMER project is to provide a platform for semi-autonomous exploration and visualisation of unknown indoor environments. HOMER has been designed with an implementation of the Player software architecture, making it possible to use it as a test bed for future research into vision-based navigation and mapping.