移動ロボットのカラー画像による自己位置同定法

抄録

This paper proposes an efficient position identification method for mobile robots in the corridor environment in the building using color images and the map information. A robot can usually estimate his position by the motion history, so called dead reckoning. However, there are the cases that the robot position estimation without the motion history is required when the self tracking of his motion is falied, or just after it is powered on, for example.
The proposed method is to identify the robot position by itself without the motion history. The method includes next three steps:
(1) Map information for the mobile robot is prepared.
(2) A color image is handled to detect a vanishing point and to generate an abstracted image. And the robot moves to the appropriate position for the identification, if the robot judges it is impossible to identify the position at the current position.
(3) Current robot position is identified by the map information, a vanisging point and an abstracted image.
The effectiveness of the proposed method is also shown by the experimental result.