PR2 Coffee Run

Project DescriptionPR2 Coffee Run

We developed an autonomous robotic system that safely navigates through an unmodified campus environment to purchase and deliver a cup of coffee. To accomplish this task, the robot navigates through indoor and outdoor environments, opens heavy spring-loaded doors, calls, enters, and exits an elevator, waits in line with other customers, interacts with coffee shop employees to purchase beverages, and returns to its original location to deliver the beverages. There were four main contributions: a robust infrastructure for unifying multiple 2D navigation maps; a process for detecting and opening transparent, heavy spring-loaded doors; algorithms for operating elevators; and software that enables the intuitive passing of objects to and from untrained humans.

Tony’s Presentation at the ICRA 2013 Conference

IEEE Spectrum Article

LASER Talk – Public Lecture by Tony Pratkanis on the Coffee Run

Full Run YouTube Video

Related Publications

A. T. Pratkanis, A. E. Leeper, and J. K. Salisbury “Replacing the Office Intern, Autonomous Coffee Run With a Mobile Manipulator”
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2013, pp. 1248 – 1253
(PDF)

Project Staff

Status

Active since 2012.

Funding Sources

None.

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