This study presents a precise relative navigation algorithm using both laser and Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements in real time. The measurement model of the navigation algorithm between two spacecraft is comprised of relative distances measured by laser instruments and single differences of GPS pseudo-range measurements in spherical coordinates. Based on the measurement model, the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is applied to smooth the pseudo-range measurements and to obtain the relative navigation solution. While the navigation algorithm using only laser measurements might become inaccurate because of the limited accuracy of spacecraft attitude estimation when the distance between spacecraft is rather large, the proposed approach is able to provide an accurate solution even in such cases by employing the smoothed GPS pseudo-range measurements. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the errors of the proposed algorithm are reduced by more than about 12% compared to those of an algorithm using only laser measurements, as the accuracy of angular measurements is greater than 0.001° at relative distances greater than 30 km.

In this paper, a high precision outdoor positioning system is newly proposed using multiple GPS receivers based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Typically, the GPS signal has the instantaneous errors that degrade the positioning seriously. Using the multiple GPS receivers instead of an expensive DGPS receiver, the positioning reliability and accuracy are improved in this research as a low cost solution. To incorporate the small displacement, an INS data have been tightly coupled to the GPS data, which has the inherit disadvantage of the cumulative error occurring over time. To achieve a stabilized and accurate positioning system, the multiple GPS receiver data are fused with the INS data through the EKF process. Through real navigation experiments of an outdoor mobile robot, the performance of the proposed system has been verified to be accurate comparable to DGPS system with a lower cost.

본 논문에서는 시퀀스 상에서 확장 칼만필터(Extended Kalman Filter) 기반의 SLAM(Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) 시스템의 안정적인 카메라 추적과 재위치(re-localization) 방법이 제안된다. SLAM으로 얻어진 3차원 특징점에 들로네(Delaunay) 삼각화를 적용하여 기준(reference) 평면을 설정하며, 평면상에 존재하는 특징점의 BRISK(Binary Robust Invariant Scalable Keypoints) 기술자(descriptor)를 생성한다. 기존 확장 칼만필터의 오차가 누적되는 경우를 판단하여 기준 평면의 호모그래피로부터 카메라 정보를 해석한다. 또한 카메라가 급격하게 이동해서 특징점 추적이 실패하면, 저장된 강건한 기술자 정보를 매칭하여 카메라의 위치를 다시 추정한다.

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.

This paper suggests a new observation model for Extended Kalman Filter based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (EKF-SLAM). Since the EKF framework linearizes non-linear functions around the current estimate, the conventional line model has large linearization errors when a mobile robot locates faraway from its initial position. On the other hand, the model that we propose yields less linearization error with respect to the landmark position and thus suitable in a large-scale environment. To achieve it, we build up a three-dimensional space by adding a virtual axis to the robot’s two-dimensional coordinate system and extract a plane by using a detected line on the two-dimensional space and the virtual axis. Since Jacobian matrix with respect to the landmark position has small value, we can estimate the position of landmarks better than the conventional line model. The simulation results verify that the new model yields less linearization errors than the conventional line model.

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 proposes a robust image stabilization system for a mobile robot using an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Though image information is one of the most efficient data used for robot navigation, it is subjected to noise which is the result of internal vibration as well as external factors such as uneven terrain, stairs, or marshy surfaces. The camera vibration deteriorates the image resolution by destroying the image sharpness, which seriously prevents mobile robots from recognizing their environment for navigation. In this paper, an inclinometer was used to measure the vibration angle of the camera system mounted on the robot to obtain a reliable image by compensating for the angle of the camera vibration. In addition the angle prediction obtained by using the EKF enhances the image response analysis for real time performance. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed system used to compensate for the blurring of the images.