Position Estimation Using Neural Network for Navigation of Wheeled Mobile Robot (WMR) in a Corridor

This paper describes position estimation algorithm using neural network for the navigation of the vision-based wheeled mobile robot (WMR) in a corridor with taking ceiling lamps as landmark. From images of a corridor the lamp's line on the ceiling in corridor has a specific slope to the lateral position of the WMR. The vanishing point produced by the lamp's line also has a specific position to the orientation of WMR. The ceiling lamps have a limited size and shape like a circle in image. Simple image processing algorithms are used to extract lamps from the corridor image. Then the lamp's line and vanishing point's position are defined and calculated at known position of WMR in a corridor. To estimate the lateral position and orientation of WMR from an image, the relationship between the position of WMR and the features of ceiling lamps have to be defined. But it is hard because of nonlinearity. Therefore, data set between position of WMR and features of lamps are configured. Neural network are composed and learned with data set. Back propagation algorithm(BPN) is used for learning. And it is applied in navigation of WMR in a corridor.