MOBILE ROBOT NAVIGATION USING THE RANGE-WEIGHTED HOUGH TRANSFORM

Accurate navigation of a mobile robot in cluttered rooms using a range -measuring laser as a sensor has been achieved. To extract the directi ons and distances to the walls of the room the range-weighted Hough tr ansform is used. The following experimental results are emphasized: Th e robot extracts the walls of the surrounding room from the range meas urements. The distances between parallel walls are estimated with a st andard deviation smaller than 1 cm. It is possible to navigate the rob ot along any preselected trajectory in the room. One special case is n avigation through an open door detected by the laser. The accuracy of the passage is 1 cm at a speed of 0.5 m/s. The trajectory is perpendic ular to the wall within 0.5 degrees in angle. When navigating through corridors, the accuracy is better than I cm at 0.8 m/s - the maximum s peed of the robot. Odometric data and laser measurements are combined using the extended Kalman filter. The size of the cluttered rectangula r room and the position and orientation (pose) of the robot are estima ted during motion. The extraction and the resulting navigation are ver y robust against bath spurious measurements in the laser measurements and disturbing objects.