Position estimation method based on the optical displacement sensor for an autonomous hull cleaning robot

Abstract

This paper presents the new position estimation method which contains the optical displacement sensor and the dead reckoning based position estimation algorithm for automation of hull cleaning robot. To evaluate feasibility of the proposed position estimation method on the hull cleaning robot, it was applied on the small scale robot model which has an identical drive method with the hull cleaning robot and then a set of the position estimation experiments were performed. The experimental results of the position estimation demonstrate that the estimated results with the optical displacement sensors is more accurate than used rotary encoder method. In addition, it continuously calculated the robot position quite close to the real robot driving path. In a follow-up study, the proposed position estimation method will be complemented and exploited on the actual hull cleaning robot by adding additional sensor modules that correct measurement errors.