Development of Air Conditioning Equipment Inspection Robot with Vision Based Navigation System

In order to maintain a comfortable office environment periodical inspection of the air conditioning equipment is very important. It is necessary to measure the air temperature and the volume of the controlled outlet air correctly from the ceiling air diffuser. The periodical inspection of a large number of ceiling air diffusers must be done efficiently and in a short time. Up to now this hard work has been done by humans. However, we have developed a robot which will take the place of the human and perform these inspections automatically. This autonomous mobile robot recognises the position of ceiling air diffusers from map information supplied to it. The robot measures the air temperature and air volume, and moves on to the next diffuser and so on. In this paper we present an outline of this autonomous mobile robot.