Active sensing for range-only mapping using multiple hypothesis

Abstract

Radio signal-based localization and mapping is becoming more interesting in robotics as applications involving the collaboration between robots and static wireless devices are more common. This paper describes a method for mapping with a mobile robot the position of a set of nodes using radio signal measurements. The method employs Gaussian Mixtures Models (GMM) for undelayed initialization of the position of the wireless nodes within a Kalman filter. Moreover, the paper extends the method to consider active sensing strategies in order to map the nodes. Entropy variation is used as a measurement of information gain, and allows to prioritize control actions of the robot. However, as there is no analytical expression for the entropy of a GMM, upper bounds of the entropy, for which close form computation is possible, are used instead. The paper describes simulations that show the feasibility of the approach.