People Following System Based on LRF

One main feature of differential driven mobile robot systems is to follow the target person automatically with low computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a simple, effective and robust target person following system based on Laser Range Finder(LRF). Firstly, by using a dynamic threshold based on measurement distance and measurement error of LFR, we cluster the raw data of LRF. Then the accurate position information is obtained by exclusion method and time information. Depending on the geometric characteristics of human legs, the processes of exclusion method obtains candidate clusters which may represent target person. The final target person location is further picked from candidate clusters by time information. Finally, several PID controllers are adopted to drive the mobile robot and make mobile robot following target person steadily and robustly. The people following method implement in Robot Operating System (ROS) and our own mobile robot. The experimental results verify the effectiveness, robustness and accuracy of our proposed method.