Development of advanced grid map building model based on sonar geometric reliability for indoor mobile robot localization

A novel approach to building a grid map using sonar data for a mobile robot is proposed in this study. It is very important for a mobile robot to find its surrounding saliencies and to localize itself for indoor navigation. Ultrasonic sensors are of great practical value in building environmental maps and for autonomous operation. However, grid maps constructed by ultrasonic sensors cannot typically form a realistic representation of a given environment due to incorrect sonar measurements caused by specular reflection and wide beam width. In this study, an advanced sonar sensor model, in which the negative effect of incorrect sonar measurements is minimized by geometric association with sonar data, is introduced to build a high-quality grid map. Experimental results and evaluations in the home environment demonstrate the validity of the proposed methods.