Abstract
The Tsukuba Challenge is a proving ground for mobile robots, the task of which is autonomous navigatoin along a predefined path of 1km in outdoor environments. We joined the Tsukuba Challenge and achieved the tasks in 2009 and 2010. This paper focuses on the problem analysis and basic design of our navigation system, and presents the design policy and lessons learned in the experiments. Our system consists of gyro-assisted odometry, a roundly-swinging 3D laser scanner, a fish-eye camera, and a localization method using map matching and a particle filter. The integration of these technologies made our system highly reliable to achieve the task.
