Related work

A human-tracking function can allow a robot to be a human assistant under various situations,
such as accompanying runners or acting as a travel guide. Robots will
no longer play the role of workers, but will be the friends of humankind [1].

Many research teams have observed human detection in robots. Some robots studied, use an
RGB-D sensor such as Kinect or Xtion for detection. In [2], a human-robot interactive
demonstration system was designed to help nonexpert humans control a humanoid robot.
Reference [3] describes a tracking control system of human motion using a Kinect placed on-
board a mobile robot. However, there are some shortcomings of Kinect-type sensors:

 1)the target person cannot be obscured,

 2) the performance is poorer on moving platforms, and
 3) the measurement range is narrow.

A specifically equipped room is widely applied to search for a target person. In [4], an
intelligent environment is used to achieve the goals of recognizing the target person and the
environment around the robot, along with the development of a control strategy for stable
human-following capability. However, such a room requires expensive equipment and there
are limited places where it can be located.

A number of laser range scanners are used in [5] to set up a system for detecting the feet
of humans and tracking pedestrians in a wide and open area. In [6], the authors propose a
one-room tracking area in a home-like environment with cameras placed in the four corners
and laser range sensors to detect and track the hips of a human target. Reference [7] sets up
three laser range scanners for detecting different body parts such as the legs, upper body, and
head. However, the platform is fixed. Reference [8] tactfully uses a laser range scanner and
a mirror to detect human legs. In addition, references [9–11] detect and track human legs
using a single laser range finder. However, when the robot detects human legs, it may be
confused in deciding which two legs constitute a pair, and may sometimes fail to detect a
female wearing a long dress

Several researchers have presented studies on robots for following humans. In [12], human
following behaviors for a mobile robot are presented. Reference [13] carries out an in-depth
study on the possibilities of a color camera being placed on top of a robot to distinguish
humans, and then generates a reliable human following behavior of the robot. The mobile
robot described in [14] is a human-assisting and -following robot aimed at socially
appropriate spatial skills and has the ability to travel around or near people and to accompany
people side-by-side. In [15], an adaptive moving target tracking control (AMTC) scheme
using a dynamic petri recurrent-fuzzy-neural-network (DPRFNN) is constructed for a vision-
based mobile robot with a tilt camera.

The tracking algorithm in [16] mainly makes use of a hybrid approach of gathering vision
and laser range sensor data for human-following. Reference [17] utilizes a localization
method to achieve human-following control of a mobile robot, which is based on interactive
communication between a mobile robot and a networked laser range
scanner installed in an intelligent space. However, most of these studies mainly address the
problems of how to detect the presence of, and/or how to follow, humans, but do not describe
the confined conditions of the robot, such as the response time and limited velocity. These
studies were developed under the premise that an unlimited robot speed is available or the
target person will walk sufficiently slowly

References

[1]J. Cai and T. Matsumaru, “Robot Human-following Limited Speed Control,” The 22nd
IEEE Int. Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man2013), pp.
81-86, 2013.

[2] L. Cheng, “Design and Implementation of Human-Robot Interactive Demonstration

System Based On Kinect,” Chinese Control and Decision Conf., pp. 971-975, 2012.

[3] E. Machida, M. Cao, T. Murao, and H. Hashimoto, “Human Motion Tracking Robot with
Kinect 3D Sensor,” SICE Annual Conf.,pp. 2207-2211, 2012.

[4] T. S. Jin, J. M. Lee, and H. Hashimoto, “Position Control of Mobile Robot for Human-
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[6] H. Noguchi, T. Mori, T. Matsumoto, M. Shimosaka, and T. Sato, “Multiple-Person

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[15] R. J. Wai and Y. W. Lin, “Adaptive moving-target tracking control of vision-based

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[16] M. Kleinehagenbrock, S. Lang, J. Fritsch, F. Lomker, G. A. Fink, and G. Sagerer,

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