A Tabletop Objects Observation Method from Mobile Robot Using Kinect Sensor

Robotic mapping such as two-or three dimensional occupancy grid map has been a field of study. However such occupancy maps are not enough for advanced tasks including object search, object grasping and change detection. We focus on tables and tabletop objects because a table is one of the most important tool in human activity. This paper describes an observation system of tabletop objects based on 3D-sensors and environmental map. We developed a mobile robot equipped with a Velodyne HDL-32E Lidar sensor and a Microsoft Kinect RGB-D sensor.