3D Monte Carlo localization using a depth camera and terrestrial laser scanner

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to improve an accuracy and efficiency of 6DOF motion estimation in 3D MCL for indoor localization. Firstly, a terrestrial laser scanner is used for creating a precise 3D mesh model as an environment map, and a professional-level depth camera is installed as an outer sensor. GPU scene simulation is also introduced to upgrade the speed of prediction phase in MCL. Moreover, for further improvement, GPGPU programming is implemented to realize further speed up of the likelihood estimation phase, and anisotropic particle propagation is introduced into MCL based on the observations from an inertia sensor. Improvements in the localization accuracy and efficiency are verified by the comparison with a previous MCL method. The results showed that our proposed 3D MCL method outperforms the previous one in accuracy and efficiency.