Development of an Outdoor Autonomous Driving Robot System for Urban Park Cleaning
Kuk-Won Ko · Journal of the korean society of manufacturing technology engineers · 2025
The demand for maintaining outdoor recreational spaces, such as urban parks and bicycle roads, is increasing, but municipalities are facing limitations in terms of manpower and budgets. To address these challenges, this study develops an autonomous driving system for outdoor cleaning robots by converting existing manned cleaning machines into unmanned platforms. The proposed system integrates environmental perception, path planning, and motion control using sensors, such as RTK-GPS, LiDAR, ultrasonic sensors, and cameras. The proposed system is applied to a conventional cleaning robot and tested via trial operations in an urban park. The results demonstrate that the robot can autonomously navigate designated cleaning routes while accurately detecting obstacles and maintaining safe operations. This study highlights the potential of autonomous outdoor cleaning robots to improve urban sanitation services and reduce labor dependency, especially as regulatory barriers to robot deployment are gradually easing.