Mobile robot navigation

About: Mobile robot navigation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14713 publications have been published within this topic receiving 263092 citations.

A fast path planner for a car-like indoor mobile robot

Abstract: A car-like indoor mobile robot is a kinematically constrained robot that can be modelled as a 2D object translating and rotating in the horizontal plane among well-defined obstacles. The kinematic constraints impose that the linear velocity of the robot point along its main axis (no sidewise motion is possible) and restrict the range of admissible values for the steering angle. In this paperl we describe a fast path planner for such a robot. This planner is one to two orders of magnitude faster than previously implemented planners for the same type of robot. In addition, it has an anytime flavor that allows it to return a path in a short amount of time, and to improve that path through iterative optimization according to the amount of time that is devoted to path planning. The planner is essentially a combination of preexisting ideas. Its efficiency derives from the good match between these ideas and from various technical improvements brought to them.

Ground vehicle navigation in harsh urban conditions by integrating inertial navigation system, global positioning system, odometer and vision data

Abstract: Combining GPS/INS/odometer data has been considered one of the most attractive methodologies for ground vehicle navigation. In the case of long GPS signal blockages inherent to complex urban environments, however, the accuracy of this approach is largely deteriorated. To overcome this limitation, this study proposes a novel ground vehicle navigation system that combines INS, odometer and omnidirectional vision sensor. Compared to traditional cameras, omnidirectional vision sensors can acquire much more information from the environment thanks to their wide field of view. The proposed system automatically extracts and tracks vanishing points in omnidirectional images to estimate the vehicle rotation. This scheme provides robust navigation information: specifically by combining the advantages of vision, odometer and INS, we estimate the attitude without error accumulation and at a fast running rate. The accurate rotational information is fed back into a Kalman filter to improve the quality of the INS bridging in harsh urban conditions. Extensive experiments have demonstrated that the proposed approach significantly reduces the accumulation of position, velocity and attitude errors during simulated GPS outages. Specifically, the position accuracy is improved by over 30% during simulated GPS outages.

Distributed vision system: a perceptual information infrastructure for robot navigation

Abstract: This paper proposes a Distributed Vision System as a Perceptual Information Infrastructure for robot navigation in a dynamically changing world. The distributed vision system, consisting of vision agents connected with a computer network, monitors the environment, maintains the environment models, and actively provides various information for the robots by organizing communication between the vision agents. In addition to conceptual discussions and fundamental issues, this paper provides a prototype of the distributed vision system for navigating mobile robots.

Method and apparatus for providing navigation guidance

Abstract: A method and apparatus (10) for providing navigation guidance via a land vehicle by providing a navigation route planner (24) having a road network database (12) for planning a navigation route along the road network, determining a current estimated position of the land vehicle, communicating maneuver instructions to a driver of the land vehicle at a predetermined maneuver distance base value before the land vehicle reaches a required maneuver along the planned navigation route, and detecting and quantifying current environmental travel conditions for assisting a navigation device in guiding the land vehicle along the planned navigation route.