Investigation of Human Environmental Recognition During Walking Using VR and its Application to Autonomous Driving of Mobile Robots

Teams participating in robot competitions commonly use LiDAR-SLAM for robot navigation. However, when there are significant differences between the pre-created point cloud map of the environment and the point cloud data obtained during autonomous driving, or in open environments where acquiring point cloud data is difficult, the robot may lose its self-position and often fail in autonomous driving. Humans can reach their destinations even in unfamiliar environments by relying primarily on visual cues along with guidance information such as maps and signs. It can be said that humans rely on visual information when navigating. Similarly, if robots navigate using visual information like humans, it may become possible to achieve autonomous driving without requiring pre-acquired dense point cloud maps. In this paper, we investigated how humans walk and what they focus on while walking, both in real world and when remotely controlling a robot using VR (including cases where surrounding information other than the road was removed). The results indicated that if the recognition of the road is possible, it may be feasible to complete a course without a pre-existing map. Based on these findings, we developed a simple navigation system using road recognition using vanishing points. Its effectiveness was confirmed through driving experiments conducted on a university campus.