On human-centric and robot-centric perspective of a building model

Abstract The effectiveness of mobile robots operating in buildings depends strongly on their ability to cooperate with people. The cooperation requires a common language for communication. In this paper, the problem of modelling buildings in the context of communication between humans and robots is considered. Significant differences between the perception of building elements by humans and robots are discussed at the onset. This analysis allows us to propose a human-oriented building model, which represents elements, features and relations used by people in communication. This model warrants the unambiguous identification of building elements, which forms a good basis for the communication between humans and robots. Further, the model is implemented by means of a flexible, document-based database. Finally, a mapping between the proposed model and the existing robot-oriented models of buildings is proposed, followed by case studies that demonstrate the usage of the proposed methodology.