Localization of a Mobile Robot Using Multiple Ceiling Lights

Abstract

We propose a new global positioning method for the indoor mobile robots. The multiple indoor lights fixed in ceiling are used as the landmarks of positioning system. The ceiling images are acquired by the fisheye lens camera mounted on the moving robot. The position and orientation of the lights are extracted by binarization and labeling techniques. Also the boundary lines between ceiling and walls are extracted to identify the order of each light. The robot position is then calculated from the extracted position and known position of the lights. The proposed system can increase the accuracy and reduce the computation time comparing with the other positioning methods using natural landmark. Experimental results are presented to show the performance of the method.