Self-Localization using Spatially Seamless Local Communication System

Abstract

In controlling the mobile robots, self-localization is an important elemental technology. As a self-localization method of the wheel type mobile robots, there is a dead reckoning method which estimates a movement distance from a rotation amount calculated based on values from an encoder mounted on wheels or motors. However, in practice,there is an error caused by external factors such as idling of the wheels. As one of choices to reduce the error, methods of estimating the self position by using relative positions of other robots are introduced, especially in swarm robot environment. Although these methods can effectively utilize the existence of surrounding robots, they are often limited to verification in simulation. One of the reasons is the difficulty in developing communication devices for swarm robot environments. The spatially seamless local communication system we have developed is effective as a device for that purpose. However, it is difficult to mount it on small robots due to its large size and its complicated structure. In this paper, we propose the communication system redesigned to from a structure that is compact and suitable for self-localization.