Omniview-based concurrent map building and localization using adaptive appearance maps

This paper describes a novel omnivision-based concurrent map-building and localization (CML) approach which is able to robustly localize a mobile robot in a uniformly structured, maze-like environment with changing appearances. The presented approach extends and improves known appearance-based CML techniques in a few essential aspects. For example, an advanced learning scheme in combination with an active forgetting is introduced to allow a complexity restricting adaptation of the environment model to appearance variations of the operation area. Moreover, a generalized scheme for fusion of localization hypotheses from several state estimators with different meaning and certainty and a distributed coding of the current observation by a weighted set of reference observations is proposed. Finally, several real-world localization experiments investigating the stability and localization accuracy of this novel omnivision-based CML technique for a highly dynamic and populated operation area, a home store, are presented.