Communications of the ACM
High-Tech Librarian Knows Its Books
Researchers at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research are developing robot technology to assist librarians.
Credit: A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research
A*STAR researchers say they are developing robot technology designed to relieve librarians of the menial tasks of their job, while enhancing the searching and sorting of books.
The latest project from a team in the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research involves an autonomous robotic shelf-scanning (AuRoSS) platform. The technology can self-navigate through libraries at night, and scan radio-frequency identification tags to produce reports on missing and out-of-sequence books.
The researchers needed to find a way to steer a tall, wheeled robot through complex mazes of library stacks, while keeping a critical distance from shelves at all times. Another key obstacle involved reading available library maps, considering their resolutions usually are not detailed enough for robot movement.
To help track shelves in real time, the researchers assembled a "macro-mini" manipulator, in which the mobile base robot contains an additional small robotic arm.
AuRoSS has achieved up to 99% scanning accuracy, according to the researchers. "We are improving the robustness and analytics engine and integrating into library operations," says A*STAR's Renjun Li.
From A*STAR Research
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Abstracts Copyright © 2016 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
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