A Covariance Matrix Estimation Method for Position Uncertainty of the Wheeled Mobile Robot

A covariance matrix is a tool that expresses odometry uncertainty of the wheeled mobile robot. The covariance matrix is a key factor in various localization algorithms such as Kalman filter, topological matching and so on. However it is not easy to acquire an accurate covariance matrix because we do not know the real states of the robot. Up to the authors knowledge, there seems to be no established result on the covariance matrix estimation for the odometry. In this paper, we propose a new method which can estimate the covariance matrix from empirical data. It is based on the PC-method and shows a good estimation ability. The experimental results validate the performance of the proposed method.