Indoor Mobile Robot Navigation Research Articles

Robot Localization from Meaningful Segments

Odometry and dead reckoning techniques are valuable tools for indoor mobile robot navigation. However, these techniques alone are not enough to estimate the robot position because they introduce cumulative errors. Reliable robot positioning requires additional sensing schemes to periodically update the robot localization and to reset the unbounded growing of odometric uncertainty. In this paper a monocular vision system is proposed for that purpose: matching image lines with a projected CAD-3D map of the environment is used for mobile robot positioning. Additionally, three general techniques for pose estimation are investigated.

Development of Indoor Mobile Robot Navigation System Using Ultrasonic Sensors

A simple localization system for indoor mobile robot navigation using ultrasonic sensors is proposed according to the "RECS"(Robot Environment Compromise System) concept. In this system some ultrasonic receivers are located on the ceiling of the room and one ultrasonic transmitter is attached to the mobile robot. The time-of-flights of the ultrasonic pulses from the transmitter to the receivers are measured and the position of the transmitter, namely the position of the robot, is obtained using the triangulation principle. In this paper we describe the method calculating 3-D coordinates and correcting the delay time of transmitting an ultrasonic pulse

Indoor Navigation of Mobile Robots Based on Natural Landmarks

To derive cost efficient solutions, navigation of mobile robots should take advantage of known facts of the environment, like maps of buildings. This paper discusses the use of range sensor measurements at characteristic locations to periodically correct the drift in odometry data, in order to derive the vehicle’s position and orientation with sufficient accuracy. The main objective is to provide a low cost navigation system without the need for external reference marks. This paper outlines the approach, the sensor data processing algorithm and results of performance tests in industrial environments.

Measuring the distance and orientation of a planar surface using nonstructured lighting-3-D measurement system for indoor mobile robots

This paper describes a novel method for measuring the distances to planar surfaces and their orientations. The measurement system consists of a TV camera and two ordinary lamps. The lamps are switched on alternately, and images under each lighting condition are taken. If the two light sources are arranged at appropriate positions with respect to the camera, the peak positions in the two images directly give the surface orientation and the perpendicular distance to the plane. By measuring the two peak positions, this method promises to speed up the acquisition of geometrical information on an entire scene considerably because the distance and orientation can be obtained without analyzing range maps. Since the equipment setup is very simple, the proposed technique will be useful, for example, for real-world robotic applications such as navigation of indoor mobile robots. The experimental results on the error of measurement show that the method is sufficient for such purposes.

A stereo vision-based obstacle detecting method for mobile robot navigation

SUMMARYThis paper presents a computationally simple stereo vision method for detecting useful features of obstacles on the ground relevant to a mobile robot's navigation in an indoor environment. Enhanced time efficiency and reliability is achieved by introducing a geometrical image transformation and a frame-wise iterative edge image comparison scheme. The image transformation used in this paper relates each constant disparity value to an oblique plane at an elevation from the floor. The stereo correspondence method is devised by implementing a frame-wise AND operation based upon edge orientation and a subsequent pixel wise intensity correlation checking. This method is efficient in terms of computation time and capable of identifying isodisparity points, so that the height information of all the obstacle points above the floor can be determined. The obtained disparities are recorded on a local map to give complete obstacle features for mobile robot's path planning. Through a series of experiments performed under various environmental conditions, it is found that the proposed method can effectively be applied for locating obstacles of various heights in indoor navigation of mobile robots.