Differential evolution approach to the grid-based localization and mapping problem

A new solution to the Simultaneous Localization and Modelling problem is presented. It is based on the stochastic search of solutions in the state space to the global localization problem by means of a differential evolution algorithm. A non linear evolutive filter, called Evolutive Localization Filter (ELF), searches stochastically along the state space for the best robot pose estimate. The proposed SLAM algorithm operates in two steps: in the first step the ELF filter is used at a local level to re-localize the robot based on the robot odometry, the laser scan at a given position and a local map where only a low number of the last scans have been integrated. In a second step the aligned laser measures together with the corrected robot poses are use to detect when the robot is revisiting a previously crossed area. Once a cycle is detected, the Evolutive Localization Filter is used again to re-estimate the robot poses in order to integrate the sensor measures in the global map of the environment. The algorithm has been tested in different environments to demonstrate the effectiveness, robustness and computational efficiency of the proposed approach.