Stalker Bot

Amanda Loh and Chris Nakovski

Project Goal
The goal is to be able to
approximately detect legs of people,
and ultimately be able to detect
people from ROS laser scan data off
of the /scan topic
The aim is to have leg classification
of actual legs be the majority of the
time, with maybe realistically, a few
false positives
The only data to work off of is past
laser scan data and current laser
scan observations (no training or
prior knowledge about leg detection)

Initial Filtering
How can we classify these
points as legs?
Use what we know about
width of a leg to classify
and drop delta for height of
laser scan
Based on how you tune
min/max leg width and
your drop delta, can make
pickier filter (misses more
real legs) or more lax filter
(marks more false

Drop delta = 0.1

Min leg width = 0.1
Max leg width = 0.12

Drop delta = 0.1

Min leg width = 0.00
Max leg width = 0.5

Drop delta = 0.1

Min leg width = 0.09
Max leg width = 0.3

Matching Observations to Seen

Before Legs

****Motion model based on previous position in theta, r and a gaussian noise att

Particle Filtering
Loop over particles:
We take our current measurement
Assign weights based on how close they are
(Gaussian probability density)
Normalize
Resample based on weights
Update position and variance based on new
particles
Propagate the particles through the motion
model based on leg: dx, dy, and dt
*we define dx to be abs(currX-prevX), dy =
abs(currY prevY)

Results/Demo Time!

Conclusion/Reflection
Can successfully recognize laser scans
that have characteristic of legs
One of the most difficult parts was the
tuning
How do you characterize a leg?
What makes it a leg versus an object
that looks like a leg?
ROS difficult as beginners getting into
it
Figuring out what the input/outputs were
Plotting: -> future improvement:
integrating into Rviz for faster real time
plotting (matplotlib slight delay)