Enhancing Robotic Perception and Adaptability through Sensor Fusion and Origami-Inspired Designs

Abstract:Compact mobile robots must recover scene geometry under changing lighting and surface texture while working within tight payload and cost limits. We present a compact mobile robot that uses origami-inspired wheels for locomotion and active control of its sensing geometry. As the wheels move between terrain-adaptive configurations, the changing chassis pitch sweeps a 2D LiDAR through intermediate elevations; held wheel positions provide a chosen viewing angle. An IMU accounts for chassis attitude, and a fusion node projects LiDAR returns into the RGB-D depth stream supplied to RTAB-Map. The arrangement uses the wheel actuation already present on a sub-300 USD, sub-2 kg prototype to extend the scanner's viewing geometry. We assess depth fusion in a textureless indoor corridor and an outdoor sunlit area, with three runs per sensor configuration in each setting. Mean full-frame invalid-depth fractions fell from 21% to 11% indoors and from 48% to 18% outdoors. The prototype combines improved depth coverage with a continuously adjustable LiDAR viewpoint using the same actuation that reconfigures its wheels.

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2610.09828 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2610.09828v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.09828 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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