This paper proposes how to improve the performance of CSS-based indoor localization system. CSS based localization utilizes signal flight time between anchors and tag to estimate distance. From the distances, the 3-dimensional position is calculated through trilateration. However the error in distance caused from multi-path effect transfers to the position error especially in indoor environment. This paper handles a problem of reducing error in raw distance information. And, we propose the new localization method by pattern matching instead of the conventional localization method based on trilateration that is affected heavily on multi-path error. The pattern matching method estimates the position by using the fact that the measured data of near positions possesses a high similarity. In order to gain better performance of localization, we use EKF(Extended Kalman Filter) to fuse the result of CSS based localization and robot model.

Global positioning system (GPS) is widely used to measure the position of a vehicle. However, the accuracy of the GPS can be severely affected by surrounding environmental conditions. To deal with this problem, the GPS and odometry data can be combined using an extended Kalman filter. For stable navigation of an outdoor mobile robot using the GPS, this paper proposes two methods to evaluate the reliability of the GPS data. The first method is to calculate the standard deviation of the GPS data and reflect it to deal with the uncertainty of the GPS data. The second method is to match the GPS data to the traversability map which can be obtained by classifying outdoor terrain data. By matching of the GPS data with the traversability map, we can determine whether to use the GPS data or not. The experimental results show that the proposed methods can enhance the performance of the GPS‐based outdoor localization.

This paper presents a localization system using ceiling images in a large indoor environment. For a system with low cost and complexity, we propose a single camera based system that utilizes ceiling images acquired from a camera installed to point upwards. For reliable operation, we propose a method using hybrid features which include natural landmarks in a natural scene and artificial landmarks observable in an infrared ray domain. Compared with previous works utilizing only infrared based features, our method reduces the required number of artificial features as we exploit both natural and artificial features. In addition, compared with previous works using only natural scene, our method has an advantage in the convergence speed and robustness as an observation of an artificial feature provides a crucial clue for robot pose estimation. In an experiment with challenging situations in a real environment, our method was performed impressively in terms of the robustness and accuracy. To our knowledge, our method is the first ceiling vision based localization method using features from both visible and infrared rays domains. Our system can be easily utilized with a variety of service robot applications in a large indoor environment.

This paper propose a localization system of indoor mobile robots. The localization system includes camera and artificial landmarks for global positioning, and encoders and gyro sensors for local positioning. The Kalman filter is applied to take into account the stochastic errors of all sensors. Also we develop a dead reckoning system to estimate the global position when the robot moves the blind spots where it cannot see artificial landmarks, The learning engine using modular networks is designed to improve the performance of the dead reckoning system. Experimental results are then presented to verify the usefulness of the proposed localization system.

This paper proposes a technique of indoor localization for mobile robot by so called indoor GPS and EKF. Basically the concept of indoor GPS is similar outdoor GPS, and the indoor GPS gets distances between Anchors and Tag by a ranging method of CSS and then estimates the coordinate by distances and known Anchor positions. After we performed performance test of indoor GPS system in ideal and multipath environment, we configured that the indoor GPS has internal error factors and external error factors. This paper handled a multipath problem belonging to external error factors. At first various direct physical method are introduced to fix the multipath problems, and as expected we got errors corrected considerably. And then the method of selective anchors for indoor GPS is applied. With these two level improvement of indoor GPS performance, EKF(Extended Kalman Filter) is applied to mobile robot in indoor environment. The usefulness of the proposed methods are shown by a series of experiments in a environment giving contaminated data by multipath.

This paper presents the use of 3 axis accelerometer for getting the gait information including the number of gaits, stride and walking distance. Travel distance is usually calculated from the double integration of the accelerometer output with respect to time; however, the accumulated errors due to the drift are inevitable. The orientation change of the accelerometer also causes error because the gravity is added to the measured acceleration. Unless three axis orientations are completely identified, the accelerometer alone does not provide correct acceleration for estimating the travel distance. We proposed a way of minimizing the error due to the change of the orientation. Pedestrian localization is implemented with the heading angle and the travel distance. Heading angle is estimated from the rate gyro and the magnetic compass measurements. The performance of the localization is presented with experimental data.

The objectives of this study were to measure ambient total gaseous mercury (TGM) concentrations in Seoul, to analyze the characteristics of TGM concentration, and to identify of possible source areas for TGM using back-trajectory based hybrid receptor models like PSCF (Potential Source Contribution Function) and RTWC (Residence Time Weighted Concentration). Ambient TGM concentrations were measured at the roof of Graduate School of Public Health building in Seoul for a period of January to October 2004. Average TGM concentration was 3.43±1.17 ng/㎥. TGM had no notable pattern according to season and meteorological phenomena such as rainfall, Asian dust, relative humidity and so on. Hybrid receptor models incorporating backward trajectories including potential source contribution function (PSCF) and residence time weighted concentration (RTWC) were performed to identify source areas of TGM. Before hybrid receptor models were applied for TGM, we analysed sensitivities of starting height for HYSPLIT model and critical value for PSCF. According to result of sensitivity analysis, trajectories were calculated an arrival height of 1000 m was used at the receptor location and PSCF was applied using average concentration as criterion value for TGM. Using PSCF and RTWC, central and eastern Chinese industrial areas and the west coast of Korea were determined as important source areas. Statistical analysis between TGM and GEIA grided emission bolsters the evidence that these models could be effective tools to identify possible source area and source contribution.

In this paper, a localization error recovery method based on bias estimation is provided for outdoor localization of mobile robot using different-type sensors. In the previous data integration method with DGPS, it is difficult to localize mobile robot due to multi-path phenomena of DGPS. In this paper, fault data due to multi-path phenomena can be recovered by bias estimation. The proposed data integration method uses a Kalman filter based estimator taking into account a bias estimator and a free-bias estimator. A performance evaluation is shown through an outdoor experiment using mobile robot.

One of the main problems of topological localization in a real indoor environment is variations in the environment caused by dynamic objects and changes in illumination. Another problem arises from the sense of topological localization itself. Thus, a robot must be able to recognize observations at slightly different positions and angles within a certain topological location as identical in terms of topological localization. In this paper, a possible solution to these problems is addressed in the domain of global topological localization for mobile robots, in which environments are represented by their visual appearance. Our approach is formulated on the basis of a probabilistic model called the Bayes filter. Here, marginalization of dynamics in the environment, marginalization of viewpoint changes in a topological location, and fusion of multiple visual features are employed to measure observations reliably, and action-based view transition model and action-associated topological map are used to predict the next state. We performed experiments to demonstrate the validity of our proposed approach among several standard approaches in the field of topological localization. The results clearly demonstrated the value of our approach.

To achieve autonomous mobile robot navigation, accurate localization technique is the fundamental issue that should be addressed. In augmented reality, the position of a user is required for location-based services. This paper presents indoor localization using infrared reflective artificial landmarks. In order to minimize the disturbance to the user and to provide the ease of installation, the passive landmarks are used. The landmarks are made of coated film which reflects the infrared light efficiently. Infrared light is not visible, but the camera can capture the reflected infrared light. Once the artificial landmark is identified, the camera’s relative position/orientation is estimated with respect to the landmark. In order to reduce the number of the required artificial landmarks for a given environment, the pan/tilt mechanism is developed together with the distortion correction algorithm.

Based on object recognition technology, we present a new global localization method for robot navigation. For doing this, we model any indoor environment using the following visual cues with a stereo camera; view-based image features for object recognition and those 3D positions for object pose estimation. Also, we use the depth information at the horizontal centerline in image where optical axis passes through, which is similar to the data of the 2D laser range finder. Therefore, we can build a hybrid local node for a topological map that is composed of an indoor environment metric map and an object location map. Based on such modeling, we suggest a coarse-to-fine strategy for estimating the global localization of a mobile robot. The coarse pose is obtained by means of object recognition and SVD based least-squares fitting, and then its refined pose is estimated with a particle filtering algorithm. With real experiments, we show that the proposed method can be an effective vision-based global localization algorithm.

Recently, automatic parking assist systems are commercially available in some cars. In order to improve the reliability and the accuracy of parking control, pose uncertainty of a vehicle and some experimental issues should be solved. In this paper, following three schemes are proposed. (1) Odometry calibration scheme for the Car-Like Mobile Robot.(CLMR) (2) Accurate localization using Extended Kalman Filter(EKF) based redundant odometry fusion. (3) Trajectory tracking controller to compensate the tracking error of the CLMR. The proposed schemes are experimentally verified using a miniature Car-Like Mobile Robot. This paper shows that odometry accuracy and trajectory tracking performance can be dramatically improved by using the proposed schemes.

We propose a optimal fusion method for localization of multiple robots utilizing correlation between GPS on each robot in common workspace. Each mobile robot in group collects position data from each odometer and GPS receiver and shares the position data with other robots. Then each robot utilizes position data of other robot for obtaining more precise estimation of own position. Because GPS data errors in common workspace have a close correlation, they contribute to improve localization accuracy of all robots in group. In this paper, we simulate proposed optimal fusion method of odometer and GPS through virtual robots and position data.

A robust position-sensing system is proposed in this paper for ubiquitous mobile robots which move indoor as well as outdoor. The Differential GPS (DGPS) which has position estimation error of less than 5 m is a general solution when the mobile robots are moving outdoor, while an active beacon system (ABS) with embedded ultrasonic sensors is selected as an indoor positioning system. The switching from the outdoor to indoor or vice versa causes unstable measurements on account of the reference and algorithm changes. To minimize the switching time in the position estimation and to stabilize the measurement, a robust position-sensing system is proposed. In the system, to minimize the switching delay, the door positions are stored and updated in a database. The reliability and accuracy of the robust positioning system based on DGPS and ABS are verified through the real experiments using a mobile robot prepared for this research and demonstrated.

Abstract It is essential to estimating positions of multiple robots in order to perform cooperative task in common workspace. Accordingly, we propose a new approach of cooperative localization for multiple robots utilizing correlation among GPS errors in common workspace. Assuming that GPS data of individual robot are correlated strongly as the distance among robots are close, it is confirmed that the proposed method provides improved localization accuracy. In addition, we define two operational parameters to apply proposed method in multiple robot system. With mentioned two parameters, we present a practical solution to accumulated position error in traveling long distance.

Recently, with the development of service robots and with the new concept of ubiquitous world, the position estimation of mobile objects has been raised to an important problem. As pre-liminary research results, some of the localization schemes are introduced, which provide the absolute location of the moving objects subjected to large errors. To implement a precise and convenient localization system, a new absolute position estimation method for a mobile robot in indoor environment is proposed in this paper. Design and implementation of the localization system comes from the usage of active beacon systems (based upon RFID technology). The active beacon system is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter: 1. The RFID receiver gets the synchronization signal from the mobile robot and 2. The ultra-sonic transmitter sends out the traveling signal to be used for measuring the distance. Position of a mobile robot in a three dimensional space can be calculated basically from the distance information from three beacons and the absolute position information of the beacons themselves. Since it is not easy to install the beacons at a specific position precisely, there exists a large localization error and the installation time takes long. To overcome these problems, and provide a precise and convenient localization system, a new auto calibration algorithm is developed in this paper. Also the extended Kalman filter has been adopted for improving the localization accuracy during the mobile robot navigation. The localization accuracy improvement through the proposed auto calibration algorithm and the extended Kalman filter has been demonstrated by the real experiments.

수색구조 작업에서 표류지점 추정 모델을 윈도우 운영체계에서 쉽게 운영할 수 있는 GUI 프로그램을 개발하였다. 운영자가 화면의 선택사항을 보고 표류물체의 종류와 해상환경 조건을 입력시킬 수 있도록 하였고, 계산된 추정 점 및 선박의 표류 궤적이 좌표와 함께 전자해도상에 표시되게 하여 현장에서 쉽게 예측결과를 알 수 있도록 하였다. 프로그램에는 Leeway공식을 사용하는 방식과 Newton의 운동방정식에서 해를 구하는 방식을 사용하였다. 프로그래밍에 사용된 언어는 FORTRAN이고, 그래픽 처리를 위해 Lahey의 Winteracter 4.0을 활용하였다. 모델의 시연을 위해 2001년 5월 부산 근해에서 수행된 현장실험 결과와 예측 모델에 의한 결과를 비교·도시하였다.

In this study a drift prediction model based on fluid dynamics theory is introduced. The essential effects of environmental loads and target characteristics are taken into account from a fluid dynamics point of view. The governing equations of motion are derived from Netwon's law of dynamics. In the mathematical formulation only three degrees of freedom(surge, sway, yaw) of the drifting object are assumed and the environmental loads considered are the forces and moments by wind and current. A computer algorithm for this model is implemented to obtain the numerical result in the time domain. The preliminary tests for model verification are conducted and the results are compared with the field experiment data as well as leeway formula suggested from the field test data.