A comparison of grid-type map-building techniques by index of performance

An index of performance (IOP) designed to quantitatively express the match between a sensor-built map and a precisely measured reference map is introduced. The IOP computes a single value representing the correlation between the sensed object positions in the grid and the actual object positions. With the IOP, it is easy to compare the accuracy of different map-building methods as well as the effect of different parameters within a certain method. Two grid-type map-building algorithms were compared by means of the proposed IOP. One algorithm takes panoramic snapshots while the mobile robot is standing and uses a probabilistic distribution to update the grid. The other algorithm, called histogramic in-motion mapping, is based on rapid sampling of the sensors during motion