Acquisition of an Environmental Map by Sonar Data for an Autonomous Mobile Robot with Web Interface

A method for acquiring an environmental map by integrating distance data obtained by sonars of a moving robot with web interface is proposed. Sonar data contains outliers in some cases such as ultrasonic beam is projected onto a corner of an object. Therefore, the influence of the outliers should be reduced by detecting outliers. In our method, the outliers are detected by two ways: (i) a method considering geometrical .elation among the observed surface and the projected ultrasonic beau, and (ii) a method considering consistency with data obtained by other sonars. By measurement by the sonar, the distance from the sonar to the obstacle is obtained. Assuming the two dimensional space we can know that the inside of the sector, whose renter coincide with the sonar and whose radius is equal to the obtained distance, is the free area, and a part of the arc of this sector is the obstacle area. The generation of the environmental map is done by integrating the free area and the obstacle area obtained by each measurement by the sonars. Before the integration, the outliers detection is done by two ways mentioned above. Experimental results show that obtained maps obtained by our methods with outliers defection are much better than those by a method without outliers detection.