Use Cases

Navigation in crowded environment

This use case will only involve the wheelchairs. Each of them will be deployed in a known environment with a pre-recorded map. The map is populated with a set of POIs and a user will be able to choose a POI as a target by selecting it on a map via touch screen or by voice input. The wheelchairs will then drive the user to the POI, while navigating through an environment with different densities of crowds. The environment will include open spaces as well as corridors with static and dynamic entities, such as furniture or standing or walking humans. While driving, the wheelchair uses percepts from onboard sensors (laser scanners, depth cameras, odometry) as well as an onboard people tracking pipeline. The latter is used to feed the DNN-LNA with information about nearby people. In this use case no information other than the wheelchair’s sensors is used.

Flying robot mapping

The use case will be held in a structure provided by Hovering and it will only involve the flying robot and the orchestrator. They will have a subset of the roles that they have in the main use case:

• The flying robots: will be used to create the map of the internal spaces.
• The orchestrator: coordinates the flying robot during the mapping activity to optimize the operation in terms of time and energy consumption.

In this use case the drones will enter the desired location that has to be mapped without any pre-computed data on the dimension or structure of the environment. The drones will execute the scan with its on-board sensors navigating through the different rooms and collecting information. The orchestrator constantly merges the 2D maps received from the drones, translates them into a mathematical representation, and uses it to optimise the mapping of the areas of the building that have not yet been explored.
After the mapping procedure the images and point cloud recorded will be stored in a database to generate two outputs:
– A digital twin of the facilities to be used for simulation purposes.
– A 3D map that can be used by the wheelchair to navigate the building.

Collaborative navigation

The Use Case has the key role of orchestrating the results obtained from previous use cases while introducing validation of the safety of the system. In this Use Case, all the components cooperate to define a fully orchestrated environment in which the end user has a safe and comfortable navigation in a crowded environment. The wheelchair will be able to self-drive in crowded area. Their destination will be defined by the user via voice. The best path to reach the destination will be suggested by the orchestrator. In the event of an emergency, the wheelchair will be able to handle the situation of exiting the building in the presence of an orderly flow of people moving in the same direction.