Line map construction using a mobile robot with a sonar sensor

The objective of this study is to present a way to construct a line map of an unknown indoor environment using a mobile robot equipped with a single sonar sensor. The proposed procedure consists of two main steps. In the first step, the sonar sensor measurements from the robot surroundings are mapped into a two-dimensional occupancy grid map. In the second step, the Radon transform is used to extract the line parameters from the occupancy grid map. These parameters are subsequently used to represent the profiles of the detected objects as a representation of the robot environment. Applying a wall extension process to the resulting line map completes the process within the limits of resolution of the grid map. The presented experiments in this work have confirmed that the proposed line map construction approach is able to reconstruct the unknown indoor environment in spite of the uncertainty in sensor measurements