Feature Map Building Based on Shape Similarity for Home Robot ApriAttenda

Recently, the problem of map building and simultaneous localization is a hot topic in mobile robotics field In this paper, a feature map building approach based on shape similarity for the development of home robot is presented In the map building process, the robot is continuously localized as the map is being built. The odometry error between each constitutive step is eliminated by comparing the shape similarity of the corresponding objects in scan obtained from the laser ranger finder against the global map, which was built in the previous step. This developed algorithm is capable of producing faithful global map of indoor environment, as well as handling uncertain information, such as moving objects and fuzzy-shaped objects. The experiment is carried out using home robot ApriAttendatrade, developed by Toshiba Corporation.