Use of the parallel and perpendicular characteristics of building shape for indoor map making and positioning

We are trying to develop an easy autonomous map making method for indoor mobile robots, using the property of the usual buildings, which we can assume that the major walls are arranged parallel or perpendicular. Based on these properties, the robot can find its own direction easily, with its surroundings range data, so that the accumulated error in the calculated direction can be avoided. In this paper, we propose a method to know the robot direction using scanned range data of the environment walls, and the method to build the map by connecting the scanned range data using this property. We also present an example of experimental results of indoor map making by a mobile robot without using the odometry, which shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.