After more than half a year of elaborate design and careful debug, two robots–“Jiao Long” intelligent wheelchair and “Jiao Long” tour-guide robot–successfully passed the one-week trial operation in the Life and Sunshine Pavilion of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, which were developed by the Department of Automation of School of Electronic, Information and Electrical Engineering. Now, the two robots are used to welcome guests from home and abroad.

“Jiao Long” intelligent wheelchair is equipped with various sensors like the ranger laser radar system and vision sensors so that it can follow users’ instruction, automatically memorize and map the surroundings, locate with high accuracy and reliability, and complete large-scale autonomous navigation in a dynamic environment with flows of people. Perfect barrier-avoiding and route-planning capabilities guarantee the wheelchair’s safety. And the availability of a touch screen and speech interaction satisfies the personal needs of users with different physical disabilities. “Jiao Long” intelligent wheelchair can run automatically, can be hand-controlled and can be remote-controlled based on wireless network. Despite its smallness, this wheelchair fully presents the public a bright future of the application of automatics and robot technology in improving life and work of the elderly and the disabled.

With a lovely human-like shape, “Jiao Long” tour-guide robot can complete autonomous navigation like “Jiao Long” intelligent wheelchair and conduct speech interaction with visitors by detecting the audience in front of the camera. The moment it appears in the pavilion, the robot instantly becomes the super star, crowded by visitors who never stop asking questions and wish to take photos with it before leaving.

The two robots will provide intelligent service for visitors in the Life and Sunshine Pavilion during the coming six months including test drive of the intelligent wheelchair and tour guide in the pavilion. As long as visitors tell the robots the exhibits they want to see, they will map a shortest route and lead visitors to the destination, accompanied with a multi-media introduction of the exhibits in the form of audio and video. So visitors can have a first-hand experience of intelligent and convenient life brought by robot technology.This research program is funded by National “863” Program and State Natural Sciences Fund and hosted by Professor Chen Weidong from the Department of Automation. Besides, the robots will not successfully participate in the World Expo without great contribution made by young teachers like Wang Jingchuan and the research group of graduate students.