Abstract
Mobile Robots are increasingly being used to perform tasks in unknown environment. The potential of robots to undertake such tasks lies in their ability to intelligently and efficiently search in an environment. To achieve autonomous mobile robot navigation, efficient path planner and accurate localization technique are the fundamental issues that should be addressed. This paper presents mobile robot localization using IRID(InfraRed IDentification) as artificial landmarks. IRID has highly deterministic characteristics, different from RFID. By putting several IRID emitters on the ceiling, the floor is divided into many different sectors and each sector is set to have a unique identification. Dead-reckoning provides the estimated robot configuration but the error becomes accumulated as the robot travels. IRID information tells the sector the robot is in, but the size of the uncertainty is too large if only the IRID information is used. This paper presents an algorithm which combines both the encoder and the IRID information so that the size of the uncertainty becomes smaller. It also introduces a framework which can be used with other types of the artificial landmarks. The characteristics of the developed IRID and the proposed algorithm are verified from the simulation results and experiments.
