A Kalman Filter Localization Method for Mobile Robots

In this paper, we investigate an improved mobile robot localization method using Kalman filter. The highlight of the paper lies in the formulation of combined Kalman filter and its application to mobile robot experiment. The combined Kalman filter is a kind of extended Kalman filter which has an extra degree of freedom in Kalman filtering recursion. It consists of the standard Kalman filter, i.e., the predictor-corrector and the perturbation estimator which reconstructs unknown dynamics in the state transition equation of mobile robot. The combined Kalman filter (CKF) enables to achieve robust localization performance of mobile robot in spite of heavy perturbation such as wheel slip and doorsill crossover which results in large odometric errors. Intrinsically, it has the property of integrating the innovation in Kalman filtering, i.e., the difference between measurement and predicted measurement and thus it is so much advantageous in compensating uncertainties which has not been reflected in the state transition model of mobile robot. After formulation of the CKF recursion equation, we show how the design parameters can be determined and how much beneficial it is through simulation and experiment for a two-wheeled mobile robot under indoor GPS measurement system composed of four ultrasonic satellites. In addition, we discuss what should be considered and what prerequisites are needed to successfully apply the proposed CKF in mobile robot localization.