New Entropy-Based Adaptive Particle Filter for Mobile Robot Localization

Over the last decade, particle filters have been applied with great success to a variety of state estimation problem. The standard particle filter suffers poor efficiency during the estimation process, especially in the global localization and kidnapped problem. In this paper, we proposed a novel information entropy-based adaptive approach to improve the efficiency of particle filters by adapting the number of particles. The information entropy-based adaptive particle filter approaches use the information entropy to present the uncertainty of a mobile robot to the environment. By continuously obtaining the sensor information, the robot gradually reduces the uncertainty to the environment and, therefore, reduces the particle number for the estimation process. We derived the mathematic equation relating the information entropy with particle number. Extensive localization experiments using a mobile robot showed that our approach yielded drastic improvements and efficiency performance over a standard particle filter with fixed particles and over other adaptive approaches.     

A Localization Algorithm for Autonomous Mobile Robots via a Fuzzy Tuned Extended Kalman Filter

The capability to acquire the position and orientation of an autonomous mobile robot is an important element for achieving specific tasks requiring autonomous exploration of the workplace. In this paper, we present a localization method that is based on a fuzzy tuned extended Kalman filter (FT-EKF) without a priori knowledge of the state noise model. The proposed algorithm is employed in a mobile robot equipped with 16 Polaroid sonar sensors and tested in a structured indoor environment. The state noise model is estimated and adapted by a fuzzy rule-based scheme. The proposed algorithm is compared with other EKF localization methods through simulations and experiments. The simulation and experimental studies demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed FT-EKF localization method over those using the conventional EKF algorithm.     

基于高斯—施密特粒子滤波器的多机器人协同定位

多机器人协同定位需对各个机器人的运动模型和观测模型精确建模,需要运用非线性、非高斯系统。已经应用于本领域的各种非线性算法主要有两种：一种是扩展卡尔曼滤波算法（EKF）,它对非线性系统进行局部线性化,从而间接利用卡尔曼算法进行滤波与估算;另一种是序列蒙特卡罗算法,即粒子滤波器（PF）。本文介绍了一种改进的粒子滤波
器,即高斯-施密特粒子滤波器（GHPF）,重点比较这三种算法在多机器人协同定位领域的应用效果。     

A Probabilistic Approach to Collaborative Multi-Robot Localization

This paper presents a statistical algorithm for collaborative mobile robot localization. Our approach uses a sample-based version of Markov localization, capable of localizing mobile robots in an any-time fashion. When teams of robots localize themselves in the same environment, probabilistic methods are employed to synchronize each robot's belief whenever one robot detects another. As a result, the robots localize themselves faster, maintain higher accuracy, and high-cost sensors are amortized across multiple robot platforms. The technique has been implemented and tested using two mobile robots equipped with cameras and laser range-finders for detecting other robots. The results, obtained with the real robots and in series of simulation runs, illustrate drastic improvements in localization speed and accuracy when compared to conventional single-robot localization. A further experiment demonstrates that under certain conditions, successful localization is only possible if teams of heterogeneous robots collaborate during localization.     

General Feature Extraction for Mapping and Localization of a Mobile Robot Using Sparsely Sampled Sonar Data

This study introduces a method of general feature extraction for building a map and localization of a mobile robot using only sparsely sampled sonar data. Sonar data are acquired by using a general fixed-type sensor ring that frequently provides false returns on the locations of objects. We first suggest a data association filter that can classify sets of sonar data that are associated with the same hypothesized feature into one group. A feature extraction method is then introduced to decide the exact geometric parameters of the hypothesized feature in the group. We also show the possibility of extracting a circle feature consistently as well as a line or a point feature by using the proposed filter. These features are then assembled to build a global map and applied to extended Kalman filter-based localization of the robot. We demonstrate the validity of the proposed filter with the results of mapping and localization produced by real experiments.     

Vehicle Localization in Outdoor Mountainous Forested Paths and Extension of Two-Dimensional Road Centerline Maps to Three-Dimensional Maps

This paper presents an approach for vehicle three-dimensional (3-D) localization in outdoor woodland environments where a previously available two-dimensional road centerline map is used in combination with a loosely coupled multi-sensor system to estimate the vehicle position in mountainous forested paths. The localization system is composed of a wheel encoder, an inertial measurement unit, a DGPS, a laser sensor and a barometer. An extended Kalman filter is used for sensor data fusion and pose estimation. When available, DGPS is used for 3-D dead reckoning accumulated error correction. During DGPS blackouts, the laser sensor is used for road extraction and measurement of the displacement of the vehicle to the road centerline, then the position is corrected towards the map. Moreover, the barometer that measures the height difference towards a reference is used to correct the estimated height in absence of DGPS 3-D data. The estimated height is added to the available road map to obtain a 3-D road centerline map that includes the road width measured with the laser sensor. Experimental results in large-scale real mountainous woodland environments show the robustness and simplicity of the proposed approach for vehicle localization and 3-D map extension.     

基于粒子滤波的麦克风阵列声源定位方法

针对噪声与混响环境下的声源定位问题,本文采用了一种基于粒子滤波的麦克风对的声源定位方法。该方法在粒子滤波框架下,将到达麦克风对的时间差作为观测信息,通过计算麦克风对的广义互相关函数(GCCF)来构建似然函数。实验结果表明,本文所采用的方法提高了声源定位系统的抗噪声与抗混响能力,即使在低信噪比强混响的环境下也能获得较高的定位精度。     

An inertial navigation system for small autonomous underwater vehicles

A Small AUV Navigation System (SANS) is being developed at the Naval Postgraduate School. The SANS is an integrated GPS/inertial navigation system composed of low-cost, small-size components. It is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of using a low-cost inertial measurement unit to navigate between intermittent GPS fixes. This paper reports recent improvements to the SANS hardware, latest testing results and development of an asynchronous Kalman filter for improved position estimation.     

Collaborative Localization for Multi-Robot System with Fault Detection and Exclusion Based on the Kullback-Leibler Divergence

Multi-robot system attracted attention in various applications in order to replace the human operators. To achieve the intended goal, one of the main challenges of this system is to ensure the integrity of localization by adding a sensor fault diagnosis step to the localization task. In this paper, we present a framework able, in addition of localizing a group of robots, to detect and exclude the faulty sensors from the group with an optimized thresholding method. The estimator has the informational form of the Kalman Filter (KF) namely Information Filter (IF). A residual test based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) between the predicted and the corrected distributions of the IF is developed. It is generated from two tests: the first acts on the means and the second deals with the covariance matrices. Thresholding using entropy based criterion and Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve are discussed. Finally, the validation of this framework is studied on real experimental data from a group of robots.     

A Modified Particle Filter for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

The implementation of a particle filter (PF) for vision-based bearing-only simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) of a mobile robot in an unstructured indoor environment is presented in this paper. Variations, using techniques from the genetic algorithm (GA), to standard PF procedures are proposed to alleviate the sample impoverishment problem. A monochrome CCD camera mounted on the robot is used as the measuring device and a measure on the image quality is incorporated into data association and PF update. Since the bearing-only measurement does not contain range information, we add a pseudo range to the measurement during landmark initialization as a hypothesised pair and the non-promising landmark is removed by a map management strategy. Simulation and experimental results from an implementation using real-life data acquired from a Pioneer robot are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.     

同时机器人定位与人体跟踪的多源感知协作粒子滤波方法

提出了分布式多传感器协作的条件粒子滤波算法以解决人与机器人位置的联合概率分布估计问题．全局视觉系统中,各视角独立运行图像平面上基于粒子滤波的目标跟踪,并利用地平面单应关系实现多视角目标主轴同步融合．视觉观测进一步与机器人激光数据以顺序滤波方式异步融合,提出包含人体位置假设的激光似然场模型以提高对机器人位姿误差的鲁棒性,并引入基于Kullback-Leibler距离的自适应采样以降低描述联合分布所需的粒子数目．实验验证了该方法能够在具有观测噪声且人—机位置均不确定的情况下利用多传感器协作实现基于地图的同时机器人定位与人体跟踪．     

基于粒子滤波的移动传感器网络节点定位算法

根据移动传感器网络中节点定位的特性,对经典粒子滤波的采样策略、粒子加权策略和重采样策略进行改进和优化,提出一种新的移动节点定位算法PFNL.该算法克服了经典粒子滤波算法存在的粒子退化、采样枯竭等缺陷,从而降低节点定位过程中的计算开销和存储开销.仿真实验结果表明,PFNL算法在同等参数条件下的定位精度高于典型定位算法.     

基于动态Radio Map的粒子滤波室内无线定位算法

针对目前大多数基于射频信号强度匹配定位算法在定位精度及鲁棒性方面不足,提出了一种基于动态Radio Map的粒子滤波室内无线定位算法.该算法利用参考节点构建基于空间关联性的动态Radio Map模型,以反映信号环境的实时变化,并将移动目标定位由分类问题转化为回归问题,打破了传统网格式Radio Map模型的限制,降低了算法的时空复杂度.实验结果表明,相对于静态Radio Map模型,动态Radio Map模型将定位精度平均提高了约20%,表现出良好的环境动态自适应能力.     

A Probabilistic Framework for Sonar Scan Matching Localization

Scan matching is a popular localization technique based on comparing two sets of range readings gathered at consecutive robot poses. Scan matching algorithms implicitly assume that matching readings correspond to the same object in the environment. This is a reasonable assumption when using accurate sensors such as laser range finders and that is why they are extensively used to perform scan matching localization. However, when using other sensors such as ultrasonic range finders or visual sonar, this assumption is no longer valid because of their lower angular resolution and the sparsity of the readings. In this paper we present a sonar scan matching framework, the spIC, which is able to deal with the sparseness and low angular resolution of sonar sensors. To deal with sparseness, a process to group sonar readings gathered along short robot trajectories is presented. Probabilistic models of ultrasonic and odometric sensors are defined to cope with the low sonar angular resolution. Consequently, a probabilistic scan matching process is performed. Finally, the correction of the whole robot trajectory involved in the matching process is presented as a constrained optimization problem.     

基于改进粒子滤波器的移动机器人同时定位与建图方法

提出一种基于改进粒子滤波器的移动机器人同时定位与建图方法.该方法将常规粒子滤波器与粒子群优化算法有机结合,引入最新的机器人观测信息以调整粒子的提议分布,从而在保证算法精度的同时,减少定位与建图所需的粒子数,并有效缓解粒子退化现象.此外,考虑到常规的重采样过程容易引起样本贫化现象,引入概率算子以增加粒子的多样性.实验结果表明该方法的可行性和有效性.     

陪护机器人粒子滤波定位法中重采样算法研究

针对室内陪护机器人粒子滤波定位方法,研究了四种粒子滤波重采样算法：多项式重采样算法、残差重采样算法、分层重采样算法和系统重采样算法,并分别对其进行仿真比较。实验证明残差重采样算法粒子收敛速度和粒子匮乏程度取折衷,性能优于其它三种重采样算法,在此基础上利用仿真实验结果在HHR-0303服务机器人上进行了实验。实验证明采用残差重采样算法的粒子滤波算法,利用声纳配合里程计定位的方案能达到定位目的。     

移动机器人的改进无迹粒子滤波蒙特卡罗定位算法

粒子滤波是移动机器人蒙特卡罗定位(Monte Carlo localization, MCL)的核心环节. 首先, 针对粒子滤波过程的粒子退化问题, 利用迭代Sigma点卡尔曼滤波来精确设计粒子滤波器的提议分布, 以迭代更新方式将当前观测信息融入顺序重要性采样过程, 提出IUPF (Improved unscented particle filter)算法. 然后, 将IUPF与移动机器人MCL相结合, 给出IUPF-MCL定位算法的实现细节. 仿真结果表明, IUPF-MCL是一种精确鲁棒的移动机器人定位算法.     

基于粒子滤波的移动物体定位和追踪算法

提出一种基于粒子滤波的目标定位算法PFTL(particle filter based target localization)以及一种基于网络覆盖问题的节点组织策略SAC(sampling aware tracking cluster formation).PFTL 的基本思想是,采用一系列带权粒子(weighted particles)来预测移动物体位置的后验分布空间,每个新时刻根据传感器的测量数据来权衡和定位目标.PFTL 通过引入误差容忍(error tolerant)的方式来存储和发送目标位置数据,使汇聚点关于物体位置信息的数据误差在一个可控的范围内,进而极大地减少网络通信负荷.SAC基于传感器采样离散化的特点来制订数据融合策略,并以最大化覆盖物体运动轨的方式动态地选取节点和进行节点簇的有效组织.模拟实验结果表明,与现有的几种定位算法和追踪协议相比,结合PFTL 算法和SAC 策略能够以较小的代价取得更好的定位效果和网络负载均衡,进而延长网络寿命.     

基于粒子滤波和点线相合的未知环境地图构建方法

针对粒子滤波处理未知环境地图构建时存在存储空间负荷高、计算量大的问题, 本文使用线段特征描述环境信息, 将点线相合的增量式地图构建方法引入粒子滤波中. 在每个粒子中保存对已构建线段特征地图的假设; 使用点线相合的位姿估计算法将观测信息引入重要性函数, 确定采样空间; 通过观测信息与已构建线段特征地图之间的相合关系更新粒子权重; 最后通过选择性重采样去除因匹配不当和误差积累产生的错误地图. 分析表明, 该算法的复杂度较低. 在真实传感器数据上的实验结果验证了该算法构建室内环境地图的有效性和鲁棒性. 算法所需存储空间和粒子数远小于现有粒子滤波地图构建方法.     

基于地图信息和位置自适应修正的粒子滤波室内定位方法

现有以航位推算为基础的室内定位算法存在累积误差大、定位精度较低等缺点,为此提出一种基于地图信息和位置自适应修正的粒子滤波室内定位方法。该方法利用已知的室内地图信息在定位过程中控制粒子的生灭,在重采样过程中根据粒子的退化情况对补偿粒子的位置进行自适应调整,从而修正目标位置。实验结果表明,该定位方法克服了航位推算算法的累积误差问题,有效提高了定位精度。