This report details the mapping, localisation and path planning solutions developed for the CROWDBOT project between months M1 to M20. Each of the three technical components have been designed with the explicit goal of achieving robot navigation in crowded environments, where many existing methods struggle due to the high degree of dynamic motion around the robot. In particular, the three key challenges that we address are:
- Generating clean and coherent maps of the static environment despite the presence of dynamic obstacles during mapping;
- Achieving fast, and accurate localisation when prior information on the robot pose is unavailable;
- Executing low-latency local motion planning that balances the collision avoidance routines of the robot with making progress along the path.