language: en

Mobile Robot Localization using Landmarks

Margrit Betke
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science
Cambridge, MA 02139
Leonid Gurvits
NEC Research Institute
4 Independence Way Princeton, NJ 08540
April 27, 1995

Abstract We describe an efficient method for localizing a mobile robot in an environment with landmarks. We assume that the robot can identify these landmarks and measure their bearings relative to each other. Given such noisy input, the algorithm estimates the robot's position and orientation with respect to the map of the environment. The algorithm makes efficient use of our representation of the landmarks by complex numbers. The algorithm runs in time linear in the number of landmarks. We present results of simulations and propose how to use our method for robot navigation.

Keywords: Robotics, mobile robot localization, landmark navigation, map algorithms, triangulation.

[Part of this research was done while the author was visiting Siemens Corporate Research. The author is also supported by NSF grant ASC-9217041. Author's net address:]

margrit@lcs.mit.edu

[Author's net address:]

gurvits@research.nj.nec.com