Autonomous mobile robotics research for daily-life environment

A key issue of realizing a practical robotic system, which works in home or office environment, is its robustness in real environment. The experimental approach and task-oriented approach are good and reasonable strategy to increase robustness in the autonomous mobile robots. We are investigating on the autonomous mobile robots for indoor and outdoor environment, using our own robot platforms Yamabico as experimental tools. In this paper, our approach for realizing robust autonomous navigation in real environment is explained, with the introduction of research themes and Yamabico robots. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.