The navigation system combines Real Time Kinematic GPS (RTK-GPS) with a stereo camera rig and multiple laser range finders to provide accuracy to within one meter (3 feet). The sensors provide a 360-degree three-dimensional image of the vehicle's surroundings, giving it the capability to detect and react to oncoming pedestrians or unevenness in the ground surface. Hitachi has already tested ROPITS in an 18 square-kilometer (6.9 sq mile) area of Tsukuba city, one of the first in Japan to give the green light to robotic vehicles testing just a few years ago. The company says that besides transporting people, ROPITS could also be used as an autonomous delivery vehicle for a variety of services, and plans to continue developing the technology. Future society The use of human symbiotic robots is expected to contribute to the establishment of a low carbon society for the achievement of a sustainable society, as well as to support the needs of a future society with a high proportion of elderly people. Through pilot tests conducted on real-world footpaths, research has been conducted to improve usability and convenience as a transport support service, reliability in autonomous travel, as well as compatibility surveys with actual pedestrians. Technical features Hitachi has developed the single-passenger mobility-support robot ROPITS with "specified arbitrary point autonomous pick-up and drop-off function," which can be summoned from anywhere within the town using the map in the portable information terminal. Using this function, ROPITS is able to autonomously go and pick-up a passenger at any desired pick-up point on a footpath, or deliver a passenger to a specified arbitrary destination. Ropits can autonomously navigate to a point specified by a portable information terminal. Ropits was developed to support the short-distance transportation of the elderly or those with walking difficulties. Conventionally, a geometric environment map for robot locomotion is created by various sensors mounted on ROPITS such as GPS, laser range finder, encoder, to gather information such as distance between objects during locomotion. Precision map fusion Further, in order to create a footpath map for the extensive area of the Tsukuba Special District, a high precision map fusion function developed by Hitachi to create a geometric environment map for the approximately 18 km of footpaths in the Tsukuba Special District. As a result of this map, ROPITS is able to accurately determine coordinates and move. Thus, users by simply specifying a point on the electronic map, can move within the entire town area of Tsukuba Special District. Further, as the footpath altitude information is included, Ropits is able to move through pedestrian space of differing heights such as different floors within a building or raised intersections. Altitude information collected from such sensors, however, had a wide error margin. To address this issue, Hitachi employed information from electronic maps of the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan which contain altitude information. The ROPITS was originally designed to help those who have difficulty walking, specifically the elderly, who are becoming more and more abundant in Japan due to its rapidly aging population. As such, it is small enough to maneuver through pedestrian spaces such as sidewalks and parks. (Holiday)