An Approach to Navigation for the Humanoid Robot Nao in Domestic Environments

Humanoid robot navigation in domestic environments remains a challenging task. In this paper, we present an approach for navigating such environments for the humanoid robot Nao. We assume that a map of the environment is given and focus on the localization task. The approach is based on the use only of odometry and a single camera. The camera is used to correct for the drift of odometry estimates. Additionally, scene-classification is used to obtain information about the robot’s position when it gets close to the destination. The approach is tested in an office environment to demonstrate that it can be reliably used for navigation in a domestic environment.