What´s around me: Towards non-negative matrix factorization based localization

This paper presents a new method for representing the local and global environment captured by 2D range scans using non-negative matrix factorization (NMF). Unlike other approaches, we do not predefine features or geometric primitives, but, in contrast, extract environment specific basis primitives from occupancy grid maps. Similar to feature based methods, these enable fast map matching and simultaneously allow to reconstruct the entire initial map. Our approach enables efficient localization on highly compact environment representations. The proposed approach is applied to a publicly available dataset. First promising results are presented motivating further investigation in the application of NMF for localization and mapping.