Application of Localization Based on the DC Magnetic Field that Occurs in the Environment on Wheel-Type Mobile Agricultural Robots

A wheel-type mobile robot is simply able to localize with odometry. However, for mobile agricultural robots, it is necessary to consider that the environment is uneven terrain. Therefore, odometry is unreliable and it is necessary to augment the odometry by measuring the position of the robot relative to known objects in the environments. This paper describes the application of localization based on the DC magnetic field that occurs in the environment on mobile agricultural robots. In this research, a magnetic sensor is applied to scan the DC magnetic field to build a magnetic database. The robot localizes by matching magnetic sensor readings against the magnetic database. The experimental results indicate that the robot is able to localize accurately with the proposed method and the cumulative error can be eliminated by applying the localization results to compensate for the odometry.     

Long‐range rover localization by matching LIDAR scans to orbital elevation maps

Current rover localization techniques such as visual odometry have proven to be very effective on short‐ to medium‐length traverses (e.g., up to a few kilometers). This paper deals with the problem of long‐range rover localization (e.g., 10 km and up) by developing an algorithm named MOGA (Multi‐frame Odometry‐compensated Global Alignment). This algorithm is designed to globally localize a rover by matching features detected from a three‐dimensional (3D) orbital elevation map to features from rover‐based, 3D LIDAR scans. The accuracy and efficiency of MOGA are enhanced with visual odometry and inclinometer/sun‐sensor orientation measurements. The methodology was tested with real data, including 37 LIDAR scans of terrain from a Mars–Moon analog site on Devon Island, Nunavut. When a scan contained a sufficient number of good topographic features, localization produced position errors of no more than 100 m, of which most were less than 50 m and some even as low as a few meters. Results were compared to and shown to outperform VIPER, a competing global localization algorithm that was given the same initial conditions as MOGA. On a 10‐km traverse, MOGA's localization estimates were shown to significantly outperform visual odometry estimates. This paper shows how the developed algorithm can be used to accurately and autonomously localize a rover over long‐range traverses. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Multimodal localization: Stereo over LiDAR map

In this paper, we present a real‐time high‐precision visual localization system for an autonomous vehicle which employs only low‐cost stereo cameras to localize the vehicle with a priori map built using a more expensive 3D LiDAR sensor. To this end, we construct two different visual maps: a sparse feature visual map for visual odometry (VO) based motion tracking, and a semidense visual map for registration with the prior LiDAR map. To register two point clouds sourced from different modalities (i.e., cameras and LiDAR), we leverage probabilistic weighted normal distributions transformation (ProW‐NDT), by particularly taking into account the uncertainty of source point clouds. The registration results are then fused via pose graph optimization to correct the VO drift. Moreover, surfels extracted from the prior LiDAR map are used to refine the sparse 3D visual features that will further improve VO‐based motion estimation. The proposed system has been tested extensively in both simulated and real‐world experiments, showing that robust, high‐precision, real‐time localization can be achieved.     

一种有效的移动机器人里程计误差建模方法

移动机器人里程计误差建模是研究移动机器人定位问题的基础. 现有的移动机器人里程计误差建模方法多数针对某一种驱动类型移动机器人设计, 运动过程中缺乏对里程计累计误差的实时反馈补偿, 经过长距离运动过程定位精度大幅度降低. 因此本文针对同步驱动和差动驱动轮式移动机器人平台提出了一种通用的里程计误差建模方法. 在假设机器人运动路径近似弧线基础上, 依据里程计误差传播规律推导了非系统误差、系统误差与里程计过程输入之间的近似函数关系, 进而提出一种具有闭环误差实时反馈补偿功能的移动机器人定位算法, 对定位过程中产生的里程计累计误差给予实时反馈补偿. 实验表明新算法有效地减少了里程计累计误差, 提高了定位精度.     

How to localize humanoids with a single camera?

In this paper, we propose a real-time vision-based localization approach for humanoid robots using a single camera as the only sensor. In order to obtain an accurate localization of the robot, we first build an accurate 3D map of the environment. In the map computation process, we use stereo visual SLAM techniques based on non-linear least squares optimization methods (bundle adjustment). Once we have computed a 3D reconstruction of the environment, which comprises of a set of camera poses (keyframes) and a list of 3D points, we learn the visibility of the 3D points by exploiting all the geometric relationships between the camera poses and 3D map points involved in the reconstruction. Finally, we use the prior 3D map and the learned visibility prediction for monocular vision-based localization. Our algorithm is very efficient, easy to implement and more robust and accurate than existing approaches. By means of visibility prediction we predict for a query pose only the highly visible 3D points, thus, speeding up tremendously the data association between 3D map points and perceived 2D features in the image. In this way, we can solve very efficiently the Perspective-n-Point (PnP) problem providing robust and fast vision-based localization. We demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of our approach by showing several vision-based localization experiments with the HRP-2 humanoid robot.     

Large-scale 3D Semantic Mapping Using Stereo Vision

In recent years, there have been a lot of interests in incorporating semantics into simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) systems. This paper presents an approach to generate an outdoor large-scale 3D dense semantic map based on binocular stereo vision. The inputs to system are stereo color images from a moving vehicle. First, dense 3D space around the vehicle is constructed, and the motion of camera is estimated by visual odometry. Meanwhile, semantic segmentation is performed through the deep learning technology online, and the semantic labels are also used to verify the feature matching in visual odometry. These three processes calculate the motion, depth and semantic label of every pixel in the input views. Then, a voxel conditional random field (CRF) inference is introduced to fuse semantic labels to voxel. After that, we present a method to remove the moving objects by incorporating the semantic labels, which improves the motion segmentation accuracy. The last is to generate the dense 3D semantic map of an urban environment from arbitrary long image sequence. We evaluate our approach on KITTI vision benchmark, and the results show that the proposed method is effective.     

Guaranteed interval analysis localization for mobile robots

This paper presents a set membership method (named Interval Analysis Localization (IAL)) to deal with the global localization problem of mobile robots. By using a LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging) range sensor, the odometry and a discrete map of an indoor environment, a robot has to determine its pose (position and orientation) in the map without any knowledge of its initial pose. In a bounded error context, the IAL algorithm searches a set of boxes (interval vector), with a cardinality as small as possible that includes the robot’s pose. The localization process is based on constraint propagation and interval analysis tools, such as bisection and relaxed intersection. The proposed method is validated using real data recorded during the CAROTTE challenge, organized by the French ANR (National Research Agency) and the French DGA (General Delegation of Armament). IAL is then compared with the well-known Monte Carlo Localization showing weaknesses and strengths of both algorithms. As it is shown in this paper with the IAL algorithm, interval analysis can be an efficient tool to solve the global localization problem.     

The development of an autonomous service robot. Implementation: “Lucas”—The library assistant robot

This paper describes an autonomous mobile device that was designed, developed and implemented as a library assistant robot. A complete autonomous system incorporating human–robot interaction has been developed and implemented within a real world environment. The robotic development is comprehensively described in terms of its localization systems, which incorporates simple image processing techniques fused with odometry and sonar data, which is validated through the use of an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The essential principles required for the development of a successful assistive robot are described and put into demonstration through a human–robot interaction application applied to the library assistant robot.     

A new feature commonly observed from air and ground for outdoor localization with elevation map built by aerial mapping system

Monte Carlo localization (MCL) uses a reference map to estimate a pose of a ground robot in outdoor environments. However, MCL shows low performance when it uses an elevation map built by an aerial mapping system because three‐dimensional (3D) environments are observed differently from the air and the ground and such an elevation map cannot represent outdoor environments in detail. Although other types of maps have been proposed to improve localization performance, an elevation map is still used as the main reference map in some applications. Therefore, we propose a new feature to improve localization performance with an elevation map. This feature is extracted from 3D range data and represents the part of an object that can be commonly observed from both the air and the ground. Therefore, this feature is likely to be accurately matched with an elevation map, and the average error of this feature is much smaller than that of unclassified sensing data. Experimental results in real environments show that the success rate of global localization increased and the error of local tracking decreased. Thus, the proposed feature can be very useful for localization of an outdoor ground robot when an elevation map is used as a reference map. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Differential evolution solution to the SLAM problem

A new solution to the Simultaneous Localization and Modelling problem is presented in this paper. The algorithm is based on the stochastic search for solutions in the state space to the global localization problem by means of a differential evolution algorithm. This non linear evolutive filter, called Evolutive Localization Filter (ELF), searches stochastically along the state space for the best robot pose estimate. The set of pose solutions (the population) focuses on the most likely areas according to the perception and up to date motion information. The population evolves using the log-likelihood of each candidate pose according to the observation and the motion errors derived from the comparison between observed and predicted data obtained from the probabilistic perception and motion model.The proposed SLAM algorithm operates in two steps: in the first step the ELF filter is used at local level to re-localize the robot based on the robot odometry, the laser scan at a given position and a local map where only a low number of the last scans have been integrated. In the second step, the aligned laser measures and the corrected robot poses are used to detect whether the robot is revisiting a previously crossed area (i.e., a cycle in the robot trajectory exists). Once a cycle is detected, the Evolutive Localization Filter is used again to estimate the accumulated residual drift in the detected loop and then to re-estimate the robot poses in order to integrate the sensor measures in the global map of the environment.The algorithm has been tested in different environments to demonstrate the effectiveness, robustness and computational efficiency of the proposed approach.     

LiDAR/IMU紧耦合的实时定位方法

本文以实现移动小型智能化系统的实时自主定位为目标, 针对激光里程计误差累计大, 旋转估计不稳定, 以及观测信息利用不充分等问题, 提出一种LiDAR/IMU紧耦合的实时定位方法 — Inertial-LOAM. 数据预处理部分, 对IMU数据预积分, 降低优化变量维度, 并为点云畸变校正提供参考. 提出一种基于角度图像的快速点云分割方法, 筛选结构性显著的点作为特征点, 降低点云规模, 保证激光里程计的效率; 针对地图构建部分存在的地图匹配点搜索效率低和离散点云地图的不完整性问题, 提出传感器中心的多尺度地图模型, 利用环形容器保持地图点恒定, 并结合多尺度格网保证地图模型中点的均匀分布. 数据融合部分, 提出LiDAR/IMU紧耦合的优化方法, 将IMU和LiDAR构成的预积分因子、配准因子、闭环因子插入全局因子图中, 采用基于贝叶斯树的因子图优化算法对变量节点进行增量式优化估计, 实现数据融合. 最后, 采用实测数据评估Inertial-LOAM的性能并与LeGO-LOAM, LOAM和Cartographer对比. 结果表明, Inertial-LOAM在不明显增加运算负担的前提下大幅降低连续配准误差造成的误差累计, 具有良好的实时性; 在结构性特征明显的室内环境, 定位精度达厘米级, 与对比方法持平; 在开阔的室外环境, 定位精度达分米级, 而对比方法均存在不同程度的漂移.     

Distributed stereo vision‐based 6D localization and mapping for multi‐robot teams

Joint simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) constitutes the basis for cooperative action in multi‐robot teams. We designed a stereo vision‐based 6D SLAM system combining local and global methods to benefit from their particular advantages: (1) Decoupled local reference filters on each robot for real‐time, long‐term stable state estimation required for stabilization, control and fast obstacle avoidance; (2) Online graph optimization with a novel graph topology and intra‐ as well as inter‐robot loop closures through an improved submap matching method to provide global multi‐robot pose and map estimates; (3) Distribution of the processing of high‐frequency and high‐bandwidth measurements enabling the exchange of aggregated and thus compacted map data. As a result, we gain robustness with respect to communication losses between robots. We evaluated our improved map matcher on simulated and real‐world datasets and present our full system in five real‐world multi‐robot experiments in areas of up 3,000 m² (bounding box), including visual robot detections and submap matches as loop‐closure constraints. Further, we demonstrate its application to autonomous multi‐robot exploration in a challenging rough‐terrain environment at a Moon‐analogue site located on a volcano.     

Robust vision-based localization by combining an image-retrieval system with Monte Carlo localization

In this paper, we present a vision-based approach to mobile robot localization that integrates an image-retrieval system with Monte Carlo localization. The image-retrieval process is based on features that are invariant with respect to image translations and limited scale. Since it furthermore uses local features, the system is robust against distortion and occlusions, which is especially important in populated environments. To integrate this approach with the sample-based Monte Carlo localization technique, we extract for each image in the database a set of possible viewpoints using a two-dimensional map of the environment. Our technique has been implemented and tested extensively. We present practical experiments illustrating that our approach is able to globally localize a mobile robot, to reliably keep track of the robot's position, and to recover from localization failures. We furthermore present experiments designed to analyze the reliability and robustness of our approach with respect to larger errors in the odometry.     

基于分布式感知的移动机器人同时定位与地图创建

为了创建大规模环境的精确栅格地图,提出一种基于分布式感知的两层同时定位与地图创建（SLAM）算法．在局部层,机器人一旦进入了一个新的摄像头视野,便依据机器人本体上的激光和里程计信息,采用Rao-Blackwellized粒子滤波方法创建一个新的局部栅格地图．与此同时,带有检测标志的机器人在摄像头视野内以曲线方式运动,以解决该摄像头的标定问题．在全局层,一系列的局部地图组成一个连接图,局部地图间的约束对应于连接图的边．为了生成一个准确且全局一致的环境地图,采用随机梯度下降法对连接图进行优化．实验结果验证了所提算法的有效性．     

融合双目视觉和2D激光雷达的室外定位

高精度的定位对于自动驾驶至关重要. 2D激光雷达作为一种高精度的传感器被广泛应用于各种室内定位系统.然而在室外环境下,大量动态目标的存在使得相邻点云的匹配变得尤为困难,且2D激光雷达的点云数据存在稀疏性的问题,导致2D激光雷达在室外环境下的定位精度极低甚至无法实现定位.为此,提出一种融合双目视觉和2D激光雷达的室外定位算法.首先,利用双目视觉作为里程计提供相对位姿,将一个局部时间窗口内多个时刻得到的2D激光雷达数据融合成一个局部子图;然后,采用DS证据理论融合局部子图中的时态信息,以消除动态目标带来的噪声;最后,利用基于ICA的图像匹配方法将局部子图与预先构建的全局先验地图进行匹配,消除里程计的累积误差,实现高精度定位.在KITTI数据集上的实验结果表明,仅利用低成本的双目相机和2D激光雷达便可实现较高精度的定位,所提出算法的定位精度相比于ORB-SLAM2里程计最高可提升37.9%.     

Gyro-based odometry associated with steering characteristics for wheeled mobile robot in rough terrain

Mobile robot used for planetary exploration performs several scientific missions over long distance travel and needs to have a high degree of autonomous mobility system because the communication delay from the Earth impedes its direct teleoperation. Localization of a mobile robot is of particular importance on the autonomous mobility. Classical localization methods such as wheel/visual odometry have been widely investigated and demonstrated, but they possess a well-known trade-off between computational cost and localization accuracy. This paper proposes an accurate gyro-based odometry method for a wheeled mobile robot in rough terrain. The robot in rough terrain is often subject to large wheel slip or vehicle sideslip related with its steering maneuver, and those slips degrade the localization accuracy. The basic approach of the proposed method is to exploit odometry data for the robot distance traveled as well as gyroscope data for the robot heading calculation; however each data-set is weighted in accordance with steering characteristics of a robot in rough terrain. The usefulness of the proposed method is examined through field experiments using a wheeled mobile robot testbed in Martian analog site. The experimental result confirms that the proposed method accurately estimates the robot trajectory.     

Simultaneous localization and odometry self calibration for mobile robot

This paper presents both the theory and the experimental results of a method allowing simultaneous robot localization and odometry error estimation (both systematic and non-systematic) during the navigation. The estimation of the systematic components is carried out through an augmented Kalman filter, which estimates a state containing the robot configuration and the parameters characterizing the systematic component of the odometry error. It uses encoder readings as inputs and the readings from a laser range finder as observations. In this first filter, the non-systematic error is defined as constant and it is overestimated. Then, the estimation of the real non-systematic component is carried out through another Kalman filter, where the observations are obtained by two subsequent robot configurations provided by the previous augmented Kalman filter. There, the systematic parameters in the model are regularly updated with the values estimated by the first filter. The approach is theoretically developed for both the synchronous and the differential drive. A first validation is performed through very accurate simulations where both the drive systems are considered. Then, a series of experiments are carried out in an indoor environment by using a mobile platform with a differential drive.     

State estimation and traversability map construction method of a quadruped robot on soft uneven terrain

Quadruped robots show excellent application prospects in complex environment detection and rescue. At present, scholars mainly focus on quadruped walking in rigid environments. However, quadruped robots often need to pass through uneven and soft unconstructed terrains, prone to slip and impact. The mismatch between the planned foothold position and the real one resulting from environmental uncertainties makes the robot unstable. In this paper, the state estimation and traversability map construction methods are proposed for quadruped robots to achieve stable walking in an unstructured environment, especially on soft terrains. First, the Error-state Kalman Filter (ErKF) is extended by optimizing the leg odometry information to get an accurate robot state, especially in soft, uneven terrain. The ErKF method fuses the sensor data from the inertial measurement unit, laser, camera, and leg odometry. The leg odometry is optimized by considering the foot slippage, which easily occurs in soft uneven terrains. Then, the unstructured environment is parameterized and modeled by the terrain inclination, roughness, height, and stiffness. A traversability map, which is essential for robot path and foothold planning in autonomous movement, is constructed with the above parameters. Finally, the proposed method is verified by simulation and experiments. The results show that the quadruped robot can walk stably on different soft and uneven terrains.     

An autonomous mobile robot with a 3D laser range finder for 3D exploration and digitalization of indoor environments

Digital 3D models of the environment are needed in rescue and inspection robotics, facility managements and architecture. This paper presents an automatic system for gaging and digitalization of 3D indoor environments. It consists of an autonomous mobile robot, a reliable 3D laser range finder and three elaborated software modules. The first module, a fast variant of the Iterative Closest Points algorithm, registers the 3D scans in a common coordinate system and relocalizes the robot. The second module, a next best view planner, computes the next nominal pose based on the acquired 3D data while avoiding complicated obstacles. The third module, a closed-loop and globally stable motor controller, navigates the mobile robot to a nominal pose on the base of odometry and avoids collisions with dynamical obstacles. The 3D laser range finder acquires a 3D scan at this pose. The proposed method allows one to digitalize large indoor environments fast and reliably without any intervention and solves the SLAM problem. The results of two 3D digitalization experiments are presented using a fast octree-based visualization method.     

Correlation-Based Scan Matching Using Ultrasonic Sensors for EKF Localization

This paper presents a localization method for a mobile robot equipped with only low-cost ultrasonic sensors. Correlation-based Hough scan matching was used to obtain the robot’s pose without any predefined geometric features. A local grid map and a sound pressure model of ultrasonic sensors were used to acquire reliable scan results from uncertain and noisy ultrasonic sensor data. The robot’s pose was measured using correlation-based Hough scan matching, and the covariance was calculated. Localization was achieved by fusing the measurements from scan matching with the robot’s motion model through the extended Kalman filter. Experimental results verified the performance of the proposed localization method in a real home environment.