One of the critical components of mapping an unknown environment is the robot's ability to locate itself on a partially explored map. This becomes challenging when the robot experiences positioning error, does not have an external positioning device, nor the luxury of engineered landmarks placed in its free space. This paper presents a new method for simultaneous localization and mapping that exploits the topology of the robot's free space to localize the robot on a partially constructed map. The topology of the environment is encoded in a topological map; the particular topological map used in this paper is the generalized Voronoi graph (GVG), which also encodes some metric information about the robot's environment, as well. In this paper, we present the low-level control laws that generate the GVG edges and nodes, thereby allowing for exploration of an unknown space. With these prescribed control laws, the GVG (or other topological map) can be viewed as an arbitrator for a hybrid control system that determines when to invoke a particular low-level controller from a set of controllers all working toward the high-level capability of mobile robot exploration. The main contribution, however, is using the graph structure of the GVG, via a graph matching process, to localize the robot. Experimental results verify the described work. Index Terms---Exploration, localization, mapping, mobile robots, motion planning, tologoical maps, Voronoi diagrams. I.

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A key subproblem in the construction of location-aware systems is the determination of the position of a mobile device. This article describes the design, implementation and analysis of a system for determining position inside a building from measured RF signal strengths of packets on an IEEE 802.11b wireless Ethernet network. Previous approaches to location-awareness with RF signals have been severely hampered by non-Gaussian signals, noise, and complex correlations due to multi-path effects, interference and absorption. The design of our system begins with the observation that determining position from complex, noisy and non-Gaussian signals is a wellstudied problem in the field of robotics. Using only off-the-shelf hardware, we achieve robust position estimation to within a meter in our experimental context and after adequate training of our system. We can also coarsely determine our orientation and can track our position as we move. Our results show that we can localize a stationary device to within 1.5 meters over 80 % of the time and track a moving device to within 1 meter over 50 % of the time. Both localization and tracking run in real-time. By applying recent advances in probabilistic inference of position and sensor fusion from noisy signals, we show that the RF emissions from base stations as measured by off-the-shelf wireless Ethernet cards are sufficiently rich in information to permit a mobile device to reliably track its location.

A key component of a mobile robot system is the ability to localize itself accurately and, simultaneously, to build a map of the environment. Most of the existing algorithms are based on laser range finders, sonar sensors or artificial landmarks. In this paper, we describe a vision-based mobile robot localization and mapping algorithm, which uses scale-invariant image features as natural landmarks in unmodified environments. The invariance of these features to image translation, scaling and rotation makes them suitable landmarks for mobile robot localization and map building. With our Triclops stereo vision system, these landmarks are localized and robot ego-motion is estimated by least-squares minimization of the matched landmarks. Feature viewpoint variation and occlusion are taken into account by maintaining a view direction for each landmark. Experiments show that these visual landmarks are robustly matched, robot pose is estimated and a consistent three-dimensional map is built. As image features are not noise-free, we carry out error analysis for the landmark positions and the robot pose. We use Kalman filters to track these landmarks in a dynamic environment, resulting in a database map with landmark positional uncertainty.

Decoupled stochastic mapping (DSM) is a computationally efficient approach to large-scale concurrent mapping and localization. DSM reduces the computational burden of conventional stochastic mapping by dividing the environment into multiple overlapping submap regions, each with its own stochastic map. Two new approximation techniques are utilized for transferring vehicle state information from one submap to another, yielding a constant-time algorithm whose memory requirements scale linearly with the size of the operating area. The performance of two different variations of the algorithm is demonstrated through simulations of environments with 110 and 1200 features. Experimental results are presented for an environment with 93 features using sonar data obtained in a 3 by 9 by 1 meter testing tank.

This article describes a rigorous and complete framework for the simultaneous localization and map building problem for mobile robots: the symmetries and perturbations map (SPmap), which is based on a general probabilistic representation of uncertain geometric information. We present a complete experiment with a LabMate mobile robot navigating in a human-made indoor environment and equipped with a rotating two-dimensional (2-D) laser rangefinder. Experiments validate the appropriateness of our approach and provide a real measurement of the precision of the algorithms.

We describe an efficient method for localizing a mobile robot in an environment with landmarks. We assume that the robot can identify these landmarks and measure their bearings relative to each other. Given such noisy input, the algorithm estimates the robot's position and orientation with respect to the map of the environment. The algorithm makes efficient use of our representation of the landmarks by complex numbers. The algorithm runs in time linear in the number of landmarks. We present results of simulations and propose how to use our method for robot navigation.

The simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) with detection and tracking of moving objects (DATMO) problem is not only to solve the SLAM problem in dynamic environments but also to detect and track these dynamic objects. In this paper, we derive the Bayesian formula of the SLAM with DATMO problem, which provides a solid basis for understanding and solving this problem. In addition, we provide a practical algorithm for performing DATMO from a moving platform equipped with range sensors. The probabilistic approach to solve the whole problem has been implemented with the Navlab11 vehicle. More than 100 miles of experiments in crowded urban areas indicated that SLAM with DATMO is indeed feasible.

We present a comparison of an extended Kalman filter and an adaptation of bundle adjustment from computer vision for mobile robot localization and mapping using a bearing-only sensor. We show results on synthetic and real examples and discuss some advantages and disadvantages of the techniques. The comparison leads to a novel combination of the two techniques which results in computational complexity near Kalman filters and performance near bundle adjustment on the examples shown.

This paper considers two problems which at first sight appear to be quite distinct: localizing a robot in an unknown environment and calibrating an embedded sensor network. We show that both of these can be formulated as special cases of a generalized localization problem. In the standard localization problem, the aim is to determine the pose of some object (usually a mobile robot) relative to a global coordinate system. In our generalized version, the aim is to determine the pose of all elements in a network (both fixed and mobile) relative to an arbitrary global coordinate system. We have developed a physically inspired `meshbased ' formalism for solving such problems. This paper outlines the formalism, and describes its application to the concrete tasks of multi-robot mapping and calibration of a distributed sensor network. The paper presents experimental results for both tasks obtained using a set of Pioneer mobile robots equipped with scanning laser range-finders.