SLAM in Large Indoor Environments with Low-Cost, Noisy, and Sparse Sonars (2009)

by Teddy N. Yap, Jr. and Christian R. Shelton

Abstract: Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is a well-studied problem in mobile robotics. However, the majority of the proposed techniques for SLAM rely on the use of accurate and dense measurements provided by laser rangefinders to correctly localize the robot and produce accurate and detailed maps of complex environments. Little work has been done on the use of low-cost but noisy and sparse sonar sensors for SLAM in large indoor environments involving large loops. In this paper, we present our approach to SLAM with sonar sensors by applying particle filtering and a line-segment-based map representation with an orthogonality assumption to map indoor environments much larger and more challenging than those previously considered with sonar sensors. Results from robotic experiments demonstrate that it is possible to produce good maps of large indoor environments with large loops despite the inherent limitations of sonar sensors.

Download Information

Teddy N. Yap, Jr. and Christian R. Shelton (2009). "SLAM in Large Indoor Environments with Low-Cost, Noisy, and Sparse Sonars." Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (pp. 1395-1401).

Bibtex citation

@inproceedings{YapShe09,
   author = "Yap, Jr., Teddy N. and Christian R. Shelton",
   title = "{SLAM} in Large Indoor Environments with Low-Cost, Noisy, and Sparse Sonars",
   booktitle = "Proceedings of the {IEEE} International Conference on Robotics and Automation",
   booktitleabbr = "{ICRA}",
   year = 2009,
   pages = "1395--1401"
}