Terrain feature localization for mobile robots in outdoor environments

Abstract

A novel terrain feature localization technique is proposed in this paper to allow the robot to identify its location relative to measurable terrain characteristics. In the example of a two-axle wheeled mobile robot, a terrain inclination map is extracted from a given topographical map along a specific path. An EKF is used to fuse the measurement data with the robot motion based on the extracted terrain map. Simulations validate the proposed terrain localization technique.