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Article
Publication date: 12 June 2017

Chen-Chien Hsu, Cheng-Kai Yang, Yi-Hsing Chien, Yin-Tien Wang, Wei-Yen Wang and Chiang-Heng Chien

FastSLAM is a popular method to solve the problem of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). However, when the number of landmarks present in real environments increases…

Abstract

Purpose

FastSLAM is a popular method to solve the problem of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). However, when the number of landmarks present in real environments increases, there are excessive comparisons of the measurement with all the existing landmarks in each particle. As a result, the execution speed will be too slow to achieve the objective of real-time navigation. Thus, this paper aims to improve the computational efficiency and estimation accuracy of conventional SLAM algorithms.

Design/methodology/approach

As an attempt to solve this problem, this paper presents a computationally efficient SLAM (CESLAM) algorithm, where odometer information is considered for updating the robot’s pose in particles. When a measurement has a maximum likelihood with the known landmark in the particle, the particle state is updated before updating the landmark estimates.

Findings

Simulation results show that the proposed CESLAM can overcome the problem of heavy computational burden while improving the accuracy of localization and mapping building. To practically evaluate the performance of the proposed method, a Pioneer 3-DX robot with a Kinect sensor is used to develop an RGB-D-based computationally efficient visual SLAM (CEVSLAM) based on Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF). Experimental results confirm that the proposed CEVSLAM system is capable of successfully estimating the robot pose and building the map with satisfactory accuracy.

Originality/value

The proposed CESLAM algorithm overcomes the problem of the time-consuming process because of unnecessary comparisons in existing FastSLAM algorithms. Simulations show that accuracy of robot pose and landmark estimation is greatly improved by the CESLAM. Combining CESLAM and SURF, the authors establish a CEVSLAM to significantly improve the estimation accuracy and computational efficiency. Practical experiments by using a Kinect visual sensor show that the variance and average error by using the proposed CEVSLAM are smaller than those by using the other visual SLAM algorithms.

Details

Engineering Computations, vol. 34 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-4401

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 October 2017

Chung-Hsun Sun, Sheng-Kai Huang, Hsuan Chen, Cheng-Wei Ye, Yin-Tien Wang and Wen-June Wang

Based on laser-range-finder (LRF) sensing, the control design of location and orientation stabilization for the mobile robot is investigated. However, the practical limitation of…

Abstract

Purpose

Based on laser-range-finder (LRF) sensing, the control design of location and orientation stabilization for the mobile robot is investigated. However, the practical limitation of the LRF sensing is usually ignored in the control design, which leads to incorrect localization and unexpected control results. The purpose of this study is to design the fuzzy controller subject to the practical limitation on the LRF-based localization for a differentially driven wheeled mobile robot.

Design/methodology/approach

First, the Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model is derived from the polar kinematic model of a differentially driven mobile robot. Then, the fuzzy controller is designed to the derived T-S fuzzy kinematic model in accordance with the Lyapunov stabilization theorem. The derived Lyapunov stabilization conditions for the fuzzy control design are expressed as the linear matrix inequality (LMI) form and effectively solved by LMI tools. The practical limitation on the LRF-based localization is also expressed as the LMI form and simultaneously solved with the control design.

Finding

The location and posture stabilization experiments are carried out on a mobile robot with LRF-based localization to prove the effectiveness of the proposed T-S fuzzy model-based control design. Furthermore, the ground truth experiment evaluates the accuracy of LRF-based localization.

Originality/value

The contribution of this study is to develop the fuzzy control law for a differentially driven wheeled mobile robot under the practical limitation on LRF-based localization. The proposed control design can be applied to other robots with practical limitations on the sensors.

Details

Engineering Computations, vol. 34 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-4401

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 February 2014

Yin-Tien Wang, Chen-Tung Chi and Ying-Chieh Feng

To build a persistent map with visual landmarks is one of the most important steps for implementing the visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The corner detector is…

206

Abstract

Purpose

To build a persistent map with visual landmarks is one of the most important steps for implementing the visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The corner detector is a common method utilized to detect visual landmarks for constructing a map of the environment. However, due to the scale-variant characteristic of corner detection, extensive computational cost is needed to recover the scale and orientation of corner features in SLAM tasks. The purpose of this paper is to build the map using a local invariant feature detector, namely speeded-up robust features (SURF), to detect scale- and orientation-invariant features as well as provide a robust representation of visual landmarks for SLAM.

Design/methodology/approach

SURF are scale- and orientation-invariant features which have higher repeatability than that obtained by other detection methods. Furthermore, SURF algorithms have better processing speed than other scale-invariant detection method. The procedures of detection, description and matching of regular SURF algorithms are modified in this paper in order to provide a robust representation of visual landmarks in SLAM. The sparse representation is also used to describe the environmental map and to reduce the computational complexity in state estimation using extended Kalman filter (EKF). Furthermore, the effective procedures of data association and map management for SURF features in SLAM are also designed to improve the accuracy of robot state estimation.

Findings

Experimental works were carried out on an actual system with binocular vision sensors to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. EKF SLAM with the modified SURF algorithms was applied in the experiments including the evaluation of accurate state estimation as well as the implementation of large-area SLAM. The performance of the modified SURF algorithms was compared with those obtained by regular SURF algorithms. The results show that the SURF with less-dimensional descriptors is the most suitable representation of visual landmarks. Meanwhile, the integrated system is successfully validated to fulfill the capabilities of visual SLAM system.

Originality/value

The contribution of this paper is the novel approach to overcome the problem of recovering the scale and orientation of visual landmarks in SLAM tasks. This research also extends the usability of local invariant feature detectors in SLAM tasks by utilizing its robust representation of visual landmarks. Furthermore, data association and map management designed for SURF-based mapping in this paper also give another perspective for improving the robustness of SLAM systems.

Details

Engineering Computations, vol. 31 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-4401

Keywords

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