A method of floor recognition by using ultrasonic sensors for mobile robot navigation

초음파 센서를 이용한 로봇의 실내 평면 구조 인식

When a mobile robot moves around autonomously without man-made landmarks, it is essential to recognize the placement of surrounding objects especially for current position estimation, obstacle avoidance, or homing into the work station. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to recognize the floor paln for indoor mobile robot navigation using ultrasonic time-of-flight method. We model the floor plan as a collection of polygonal plane objects and recognize the floor plan by locating edges and vertices of the objects. The direction is estimated by the patterns of transmission beam and reception sensitivity of the ultrasonic transducer, and the distance is estimated by the correlation detection method. We show the validity of the proposed approach through experimental results and discuss the resolution and the accuracy of the estimation of direction and distance.