Abstract
In extreme environments, such as lunar surface or disaster area in the earth, it is expected for mobile robots to explore instead of human. However, in such environments, wheels or tracks of the robots are typically slipped, and thus, localization based on odometry is unreliable. To improve odometry localization, our research group has been developing a non-contact translation measurement device that uses a red laser module and an optical device. In this research, we developed a localization module that consists of the measurement device, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and Global Positioning System (GPS). Furthermore, we developed 3D range system based on the localization module and a Laser Range Finder (LRF). In this paper, we introduce the localization module and an initial experimental result of recognition of 3D environment.
