Laser interferometry measurements based calibration and error propagation identification for pose estimation in mobile robots. Issue 1 (6th August 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jiménez, Paulo A.; Shirinzadeh, Bijan
• Is Part Of: Robotica. Volume 32:Issue 1(2014)
• Page Start: 165
• Page End: 174
• Publication Date: 2013-08-06
• Subjects: Mobile robots, -- Navigation, -- Robot localisation, -- Pose estimation and registration, -- Mechatronic systems; Robots -- Periodicals; 629.89205
• DOI: 10.1017/S0263574713000660
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0263-5747

Abstract

SUMMARY: A widely used method for pose estimation in mobile robots is odometry. Odometry allows the robot in real time to reconstruct its position and orientation from the wheels' encoder measurements. Given to its unbounded nature, odometry calculation accumulates errors with quadratic increase of error variance with traversed distance. This paper develops a novel method for odometry calibration and error propagation identification for mobile robots. The proposed method uses a laser-based interferometer to measure distance precisely. Two variants of the proposed calibration method are examined: the two-parameter model and the three-parameter model. Experimental results obtained using a Khepera 3 mobile robot showed that both methods significantly increase accuracy of the pose estimation, validating the effectiveness of the proposed calibration method.