Conflict Metric as a Measure of Sensing Quality

This paper shows that the Con metric from Dempster-Shafer theory is a good indicator of sensing quality, where an increase in the conflict metric value correlates with a decrease in map quality (at p ≤ 0.05). Two sets of experiments were conducted. In one, sonar data were gathered from a Nomad 200 robot operating in typical indoor hallways. Another used sonars on an RWI Urban robot in a confined, irregular tunnel built from eight different construction materials. For each set, an occupancy grid map was built and evaluated through a quantitative comparison with the ground truth. It is expected that the results of this study will generalize not only to other sensors and multi-sensor fusion, but any application where consistency can be assumed. It also contributes a design for an inexpensive reconfigurable confined space testbed.