Probabilistic Algorithms and the Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot Minerva
Sebastian Thrun, Michael Beetz, Maren Bennewitz, Wolfram Burgard, Armin Bernd Cremers, Frank Dellaert, D. Fox, Dirk Hähnel, Charles Rosenberg, Nicholas Roy, Jamie Schulte, Dirk Schulz · The International Journal of Robotics Research · 2000
This paper describes Minerva, an interactive tour-guide robot that was successfully deployed in a Smithsonian museum. Minerva’s software is pervasively probabilistic, relying on explicit representations of uncertainty in perception and control. During 2 weeks of operation, the robot interacted with thousands of people, both in the museum and through the Web, traversing more than 44 km at speeds of up to 163 cm/sec in the unmodified museum.