Mobile Robot Exploration and Map-Building with Continuous Localization

B. Yamauchi and A. C. Schultz and W. Adams

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Summary

This paper explored map creation while the robot is actively moving. The authors strove to answer the question "the robot needs to know its position to build a map, and the robot needs the map in order to determine its postition". In many ways, GPS avoids this ambiguity, but the principles are well thought out and the lessons may be important. In particular, the authors identify frontiers along the boundaries of known space, and navigate to uncharted frontiers to construct the map. Localization is used to correct errors accumulated from dead reckoning.

Methods

Using the Nomad 200 mobile robot with a planar lasar rangefinder, 16 sonar sensors and 16 infrared sensors. Construct an evidance grid where the value is the probability of the grid's occupancy. <yawn> Detect frontier edges, which are open cells adjacent to unknown cells. Group adjacent frontier edges. The robot moves to the closest accessible unvisited frontier. Continuous localization uses knowledge of the local environment to pinpoint its position. The maximum error is defined as the difference between the reference point and the corresponding feature on the learned grid.

Keywords

frontier-based exploration, continuous localization, map construction

Rating

6

Bibtex Entry

@inproceedings{ yamauchi98mobile,

author = "B. Yamauchi and A. C. Schultz and W. Adams",

title = "Mobile Robot Exploration and Map-Building with Continuous Localization",

year = "1998"

pages = "3715--3720",

url = "citeseer.nj.nec.com/yamauchi98mobile.html"

}

 

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