Mobile robot localization technique using road surface images

This paper describes a localization technique for a mobile robot with unknown obstacles, such as pedestrians. It is important that a robot can localize in a crowded environment stably in order to perform navigation efficiently. However, In real environment, robot may be unable to run to a target position, because the robot cannot localize the self-position correctly with unknown objects, such as pedestrians. In this paper, this problem is solved by proposing the stable localization technique using road surface images in a real environment. Road surface images is able to be observed stably even in a crowded environment because it frees of influence of unknown objects, we verified the validity of the proposed method by the localization experiment and the goods delivery demonstration in real environment. From the experimental result, we checked that the proposed method can localize stably even in a crowded environment where unknown objects exist.