EKF-Based Localization of a Wheeled Mobile Robot in Structured Environments

This paper deals with the problem of mobile-robot localization in structured environments. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) is used to localize the four-wheeled mobile robot equipped with encoders for the wheels and a laser-range-finder (LRF) sensor. The LRF is used to scan the environment, which is described with line segments. A prediction step is performed by simulating the kinematic model of the robot. In the input noise covariance matrix of the EKF the standard deviation of each robot-wheel’s angular speed is estimated as being proportional to the wheel’s angular speed. A correction step is performed by minimizing the difference between the matched line segments from the local and global maps. If the overlapping rate between the most similar local and global line segments is below the threshold, the line segments are paired. The line parameters’ covariances, which arise from the LRF’s distance-measurement error, comprise the output noise covariance matrix of the EKF. The covariances are estimated with the method of classic least squares (LSQ). The performance of this method is tested within the localization experiment in an indoor structured environment. The good localization results prove the applicability of the method resulting from the classic LSQ for the purpose of an EKF-based localization of a mobile robot.     

A SLAM based on auxiliary marginalised particle filter and differential evolution

FastSLAM is a framework for simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) using a Rao-Blackwellised particle filter. In FastSLAM, particle filter is used for the robot pose (position and orientation) estimation, and parametric filter (i.e. EKF and UKF) is used for the feature location's estimation. However, in the long term, FastSLAM is an inconsistent algorithm. In this paper, a new approach to SLAM based on hybrid auxiliary marginalised particle filter and differential evolution (DE) is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, the robot pose is estimated based on auxiliary marginal particle filter that operates directly on the marginal distribution, and hence avoids performing importance sampling on a space of growing dimension. In addition, static map is considered as a set of parameters that are learned using DE. Compared to other algorithms, the proposed algorithm can improve consistency for longer time periods and also, improve the estimation accuracy. Simulations and experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm is effective.     

An approach to robot SLAM based on incremental appearance learning with omnidirectional vision

Localisation and mapping with an omnidirectional camera becomes more difficult as the landmark appearances change dramatically in the omnidirectional image. With conventional techniques, it is difficult to match the features of the landmark with the template. We present a novel robot simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) algorithm with an omnidirectional camera, which uses incremental landmark appearance learning to provide posterior probability distribution for estimating the robot pose under a particle filtering framework. The major contribution of our work is to represent the posterior estimation of the robot pose by incremental probabilistic principal component analysis, which can be naturally incorporated into the particle filtering algorithm for robot SLAM. Moreover, the innovative method of this article allows the adoption of the severe distorted landmark appearances viewed with omnidirectional camera for robot SLAM. The experimental results demonstrate that the localisation error is less than 1 cm in an indoor environment using five landmarks, and the location of the landmark appearances can be estimated within 5 pixels deviation from the ground truth in the omnidirectional image at a fairly fast speed.     

一种基于RBUKF滤波器的SLAM算法一种基于RBUKF滤波器的SLAM算法

同时定位与建图(SLAM)是智能机器人实现真正自治的必要前提,是一个比单独研究定位或者建图更加困难的课题。该文将基于SUT变换的RBUKF滤波器应用于平面静态环境下的同时定位与建图算法,它能够在同样计算复杂度的情况下,避免基于扩展卡尔曼滤波器(EKF)SLAM算法由于线性化误差大导致滤波器发散,从而出现建图错误的缺点。基于公共数据集的实验表明该方法估计的最终地图比EKF的方法精度高。     

Incorporation of Feature Tracking into Simultaneous Localization and Map Building via Sonar Data

Simultaneous Localization and Map building (SLAM) is referred to as the ability of an Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) to incrementally extract the surrounding features for estimating its pose in an unknown location and unknown environment. In this paper, we propose a new technique for extraction of significant map features from standard Polaroid sonar sensors to address the SLAM problem. The proposed algorithm explicitly initializes and tracks the line (or wall) features from a comparison between two overlapping sensor measurements buffers. The experimental studies on a Pioneer 2DX mobile robot equipped with sonar sensors suggest that SLAM problem can be solved by the proposed algorithm. The estimated trajectory of AMR from the standard model based on Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) localization for the same experiment is also provided for comparison.     

Development of a real-life EKF based SLAM system for mobile robots employing vision sensing

Developing real-life solutions for implementation of the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm for mobile robots has been well regarded as a complex problem for quite some time now. Our present work demonstrates a successful real implementation of extended Kalman filter (EKF) based SLAM algorithm for indoor environments, utilizing two web-cam based stereo-vision sensing mechanism. The vision-sensing mechanism is a successful development of a real algorithm for image feature identification in frames grabbed from continuously running videos on two cameras, tracking of these identified features in subsequent frames and incorporation of these landmarks in the map created, utilizing a 3D distance calculation module. The system has been successfully test-run in laboratory environments where the robot is commanded to navigate through some specified waypoints and create a map of its surrounding environment. Our experimentations showed that the estimated positions of the landmarks identified in the map created closely tallies with the actual positions of these landmarks in real-life.     

基于视觉惯性里程计与语义信息的无人机SLAM方法研究

室内环境中存在丰富的语义信息,可以使机器人更好地理解环境,提高机器人位姿估计的准确性。虽然语义信息在机器人同时定位与地图构建(SLAM)领域得到了深入研究和广泛应用,但是在环境准确感知、语义特征提取和语义信息利用等方面还存在着很多困难。针对上述难点,提出了一种基于视觉惯性里程计算法与语义信息相结合的新方法,该方法通过视觉惯性里程计来估计机器人的状态,通过校正估计,构建从语义检测中提取的几何表面的稀疏语义地图;通过将检测到的语义对象的几何信息与先前映射的语义信息相关联来解决视觉惯性里程计和惯性测量单元的累积误差问题。在室内环境中对装备RGB-D深度视觉和激光雷达的无人机进行验证实验,结果表明,该方法比视觉惯性里程计算法取得了更好的结果。应用结合语义信息和视觉惯性里程计的SLAM算法表现出很好的鲁棒性和准确性,该方法能提高无人机导航精度,实现无人机智能自主导航。     

基于人工路标的易部署室内机器人全局定位系统

在一些布局易变或存在较多动态障碍物的室内,移动机器人的全局定位依然面临较大的应用挑战.针对这类场景,实现了一种新的基于人工路标的易部署室内机器人全局定位系统.该系统将人工路标粘贴在不易被遮挡的天花板上来作为参照物,仅依赖一个摄像头即能实现稳定的全局定位.整个系统根据具体的功能分为地图构建和全局定位两个过程.在地图构建过程中,系统使用激光SLAM算法所输出的位姿估计结果为基准,根据相机对路标点的观测信息来自动估计人工路标点在全局坐标系中的位姿,建立人工路标地图.而在全局定位过程中,该系统则是根据相机对地图中已知位姿的人工路标点的观测信息,结合里程计与IMU融合的预积分信息来对位姿进行实时估计.充分的实验测试表明,机器人在该系统所部署范围内运行的定位误差稳定在10 cm以内,且运行过程可以保证实时位姿输出,满足典型实际室内移动机器人全局定位的应用需求.     

An Efficient Computational Hybrid Filter to the SLAM Problem for an Autonomous Wheeled Mobile Robot

The using of an autonomous wheeled mobile robot (AWMR) that perform diverse processes in a numerous number of applications without human’s interposition in an unknown environment is thriving, nowadays. An AWMR can search the environment, create an adequate map, and localizing itself into this map, by interpreting the environment, autonomously. The FastSLAM is a structure for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) for an AWMR. The correctness and efficiency of the estimation of the FastSLAM often depend on the accurate a previous knowledge of the control and measurement noise covariance matrices. Also, inaccurate previous knowledge may seriously degrade their efficiency. One of the major causes of losing particle manifold is sample impoverishment in the FastSLAM. These cases of the most main problems. This paper presents a robust new method to solve these problems as called Hybrid filter SLAM. In this method, for learning the measurement and control noise covariance matrices for increasing correctness and consistency are utilized Intuitionistic Fuzzy Logic System (IFLS). In order to optimize efficiency of sampling from Cuckoo Search (CS). The results of the simulation and experimental shown that the Hybrid filter SLAM is efficient than the FastSLAM that has less number of computations and good performance for the larger environment.

     

一种基于AMPF和FastSLAM的复合SLAM算法

为了改进快速同时定位和地图创建(FastSLAM)算法的粒子集性能、提高估计精度,提出基于AMPF和FastSLAM的复合SLAM算法.将辅助边缘粒子滤波器(AMPF)与FastSLAM架构相结合,用AMPF估计机器人位姿,单个粒子的位姿提议分布用无轨迹卡尔曼滤波估计.设计与AMPF和FastSLAM架构均兼容的采样方法和粒子数据结构,在FastSLAM框架下用扩展卡尔曼滤波递归估计地图.实验表明,该算法的粒子集性能比FastSLAM 2.0算法好,并且它的位姿估计精度高于FastSLAM 2.0算法.此外,粒子数较少时,该算法的估计精度较高,从而可适当减少粒子数目来提高算法的计算效率.     

基于扫描匹配的室外环境SLAM 方法

针对室外环境中的机器人“绑架”问题,提出了基于地图匹配的SLAM方法．该方法舍弃了机器人里程计信息, 只利用局部地图和全局地图的图形相关性进行机器人定位．方法的核心是多重估计数据关联,并将奇异值分解应用到机器人位姿计算中．利用Victoria Park数据集将本算法与基于扩展卡尔曼滤波器的方法进行比较,实验结果证明了本文提出的算法的有效性．     

A vertical and floor line-based monocular SLAM system for corridor environments

In this paper, we propose a vertical and floor line-based monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system which utilizes vertical lines, floor lines, and vanishing points as sensory input to perform robust SLAM in corridor environments. By combining three map feature types, our design can help a robot to perform accurate pose estimation, repeatable loop closure, and to construct a more expressive environmental map. As a primitive element of a geometric structure, a line segment has one additional dimension compared to a point feature, thereby allowing the use of line segments to easily represent a geometric structure using a smaller number of features. This system presents map features on a 2D ground space: the vertical line as a projection point, the floor line as the original line, and the vanishing point as a directional vector. Although the vertical line, floor line, and vanishing point use different parameterization and initialization methods, their measurement models are integrated into a unified extended Kalman filter (EKF) framework. Experimental results show that our system can be deployed in a structured indoor environment as a suitable SLAM solution.     

A Neuro-Fuzzy Assisted Extended Kalman Filter-Based Approach for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) Problems

Extended Kalman filter (EKF) has been a popular choice to solve simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problems for mobile robots or vehicles. However, the performance of the EKF depends on the correct a priori knowledge of process and sensor/measurement noise covariance matrices (Q and R, respectively). Imprecise knowledge of these statistics can cause significant degradation in performance. The present paper proposes the development of a new neurofuzzy based adaptive Kalman filtering algorithm for simultaneous localization and mapping of mobile robots or vehicles, which attempts to estimate the elements of the R matrix of the EKF algorithm, at each sampling instant when a ldquomeasurement updaterdquo step is carried out. The neuro-fuzzy based supervision for the EKF algorithm is carried out with the aim of reducing the mismatch between the theoretical and the actual covariance of the innovation sequences. The free parameters of the neuro-fuzzy system are learned offline, by employing particle swarm optimization in the training phase, which configures the training problem as a high-dimensional stochastic optimization problem. By employing a mobile robot to localize and simultaneously acquire the map of the environment, under several benchmark environment situations with varying landmarks and under several conditions of wrong knowledge of sensor statistics, the performance of the proposed scheme has been evaluated. It has been successfully demonstrated that in each case, the neuro-fuzzy assistance is able to improve highly unpredictable, degrading performance of the EKF and can provide robust and accurate solutions.     

基于概率的移动机器人SLAM算法框架

在移动机器人同时定位与地图创建(SLAM)过程中,机器人本身位置不确定,其所处环境也不可预知,针对这些不确定性因素,应用贝叶斯规则作为理论基础,建立移动机器人SLAM算法的概率表示模型,通过扩展卡尔曼滤波器实现SLAM算法,并介绍一种激光雷达数据与特征地图的数据关联方法。实验结果表明,该方法为实现SLAM算法提供了一种有效可靠的途径。     

基于混合位姿估计模型的移动机器人三维地图创建方法

针对室内复杂环境下的稠密三维建模问题, 提出一种基于RGB-D 相机的移动机器人同时定位与三维地图创建方法. 该方法利用架设在移动机器人上的RGB-D 相机获取环境信息, 根据点云和纹理加权模型建立结合局部纹理约束的混合位姿估计方法, 确保定位精度的同时减小失败率. 在关键帧选取机制下, 结合视觉闭环检测方法, 运用树结构网络优化(TORO) 算法最小化闭环误差, 实现三维地图的全局一致性优化. 在室内环境下的实验结果验证了所提出算法的有效性和可行性.

     

Discovering and restoring changes in object positions using an autonomous robot with laser rangefinders

This paper describes an object rearrangement system for an autonomous mobile robot. The objective of the robot is to autonomously explore and learn about an environment, to detect changes in the environment on a later visit after object disturbances and finally, to move objects back to their original positions. In the implementation, it is assumed that the robot does not have any prior knowledge of the environment and the positions of the objects. The system exploits Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) and autonomous exploration techniques to achieve the task. These techniques allow the robot to perform localisation and mapping which is required to perform the object rearrangement task autonomously. The system includes an arrangement change detector, object tracking and map update that work with a Polar Scan Match (PSM) Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) SLAM system. In addition, a path planning technique for dragging and pushing an object is also presented in this paper. Experimental results of the integrated approach are shown to demonstrate that the proposed approach provides real-time autonomous object rearrangements by a mobile robot in an initially unknown real environment. Experiments also show the limits of the system by investigating failure modes.     

Dual FastSLAM: Dual Factorization of the Particle Filter Based Solution of the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Problem

The process of building a map with a mobile robot is known as the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problem, and is considered essential for achieving true autonomy. The best existing solutions to the SLAM problem are based on probabilistic techniques, mainly derived from the basic Bayes Filter. A recent approach is the use of Rao-Blackwellized particle filters. The FastSLAM solution factorizes the Bayes SLAM posterior using a particle filter to estimate over the possible paths of the robot and several independent Kalman Filters attached to each particle to estimate the location of landmarks conditioned to the robot path. Although there are several successful implementations of this idea, there is a lack of applications to indoor environments where the most common feature is the line segment corresponding to straight walls. This paper presents a novel factorization, which is the dual of the existing FastSLAM one, that decouples the SLAM into a map estimation and a localization problem, using a particle filter to estimate over maps and a Kalman Filter attached to each particle to estimate the robot pose conditioned to the given map. We have implemented and tested this approach, analyzing and comparing our solution with the FastSLAM one, and successfully building feature based maps of indoor environments.     

基于激光测距仪全局匹配扫描的SLAM算法研究

针对传统的SLAM(Simultaneous Localization and Mapping)算法构建地图时容易受环境因素和外界条件的的影响,在非线性系统状态下误差修正能力不足,且当机器人位姿都处于未知状态时,移动机器人位姿获取不精确,地图构建SLAM技术特征量的获取比较繁琐、不准确等问题。以电力巡检机器人为平台,研究了基于全局匹配的扫描算法,摒弃传统的栅格地图模型的插值方法,采用双线性滤波的插值方法,保证子栅格单元的精确性,估算栅格占用函数的概率和导数。最后采用此算法解决了SLAM地图构建的问题,并分别在室内室外环境进行实验。实验结果表明：基于激光测距仪的全局匹配扫描的SALM算法,在室内室外两种不同环境下,不受复杂背景的影响,准确地进行机器人位姿定位,以及环境地图的构建     

Line Segment-Based Indoor Mapping with Salient Line Feature Extraction

We present a method of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in a large indoor environment using a Rao-Blackwellized particle filter (RBPF) along with a line segment as a landmark. To represent the environment in a compact form, we use only two end points of a line segment, thus reducing computational cost in modeling line segment uncertainty. With a modified scan point clustering method, the proposed adaptive iterative end point fitting contributes to the estimation of line parameters by considering noisy scan points near end points. Thus, by line segment matching the robot is localized well in a local frame. We also introduce an online and offline method of global line merging, which provides a more compact map by removing spurious lines and merging collinear lines. Each of our approaches is efficiently integrated into the proposed RBPF-SLAM framework. In experiments with well-known data sets, the proposed method provides reliable SLAM and compact map representation even in a cluttered environment.     

ROS系统的激光SLAM视觉智能勘察小车

对于目前常用的定位系统(例如GPS),在存在遮挡条件或者在室内执行任务时,往往会出现定位不准,无法识别区域位置等问题,这使得机器人在移动过程中无法正确地进行判断,很可能无法移动至目的地。针对移动机器人在未知环境下的定位不准,无法识别区域位置等问题,设计了一个ROS系统的激光SLAM视觉智能勘察小车,通过结合激光SLAM与深度摄像头,提升小车的数据采集能力,并结合ROS系统的图形化模拟环境,对智能小车的位置进行估计并构建地图,实现了小车的自主定位和导航。经测试,在室内或遮蔽环境下相比采用传统雷达SLAM或视觉SLAM具有更高的定位精度,并且反应快,可以进行实时地图构建,解决了在遮挡条件或者在室内执行任务时出现的问题,使得机器人在地图构建之后能够准确进行判断前往目的地。