Contributions to 3D data processing and social robotics

In this thesis, a study of artificial intelligence applied to 3D data and social robotics is carried out. The first part of the present document is dedicated to 3D object recognition. Object recognition consists on the automatic detection and categorisation of the objects that appear in a scene. This capability is an important need for social robots, as it allows them to understand and interact with their environment. Image-based methods have been largely studied with great results, but they only rely on visual features and can confuse different objects with similar appearances (picture with the object depicted in it), so 3D data can help to improve these systems using topological features. For this part, we present different novel techniques that use pure 3D data. The second part of the thesis is about the mapping of the environment. Mapping of the environment consists on constructing a map that can be used by a robot to locate itself. This capability enables them to perform a more elaborated navigation strategy, which is tremendously usable by a social robot to interact with the different rooms of a house and its objects. In this section, we will explore 2D and 3D maps and their refinement with object recognition. Finally, the third part of this work is about social robotics. Social robotics is focused on serving people in a caring interaction rather than to perform a mechanical task. Previous sections are related to two main capabilities of a social robot, and this final section contains a survey about this kind of robots and other projects that explore other aspects of them