• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.457-462
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• 2005

An empirical way of a covariance matrix which expresses the odometry uncertainty of mobile robots is proposed. This method utilizes PC-method which removes systematic errors of odometry. Once the systematic errors are removed, the odometry error can be modeled using the Gaussian probability distribution, and the parameters of the distribution can be represented by the covariance matrix. Experimental results show that the method yields $5{\%}$ and $2.3{\%}$ offset for the synchro and differential drive robots.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.931-938
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• 2008

In this paper, a novel localization algorithm robust to the unmodeled systematic odometry errors is proposed for low-cost non-holonomic mobile robots. It is well known that the most pose estimators using odometry measurements cannot avoid the performance degradation due to the dead-reckoning of systematic odometry errors. As a remedy for this problem, we tty to reflect the wheelbase error in the robot motion model as a parametric uncertainty. Applying the Krein space estimation theory for the discrete-time uncertain nonlinear motion model results in the extended robust Kalman filter. This idea comes from the fact that systematic odometry errors might be regarded as the parametric uncertainties satisfying the sum quadratic constrains (SQCs). The advantage of the proposed methodology is that it has the same recursive structure as the conventional extended Kalman filter, which makes our scheme suitable for real-time applications. Moreover, it guarantees the satisfactoty localization performance even in the presence of wheelbase uncertainty which is hard to model or estimate but often arises from real driving environments. The computer simulations will be given to demonstrate the robustness of the suggested localization algorithm.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.260-270
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• 2023

We introduce a novel Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) algorithm designed to improve the performance of thermal-inertial odometry. Thermal infrared image, though advantageous for feature extraction in low-light conditions, typically suffers from a high noise level and significant information loss during the 8-bit conversion. Our algorithm overcomes these limitations by approximating a 14-bit raw pixel histogram into a Gaussian mixture model. The conversion method effectively emphasizes image regions where texture for visual tracking is abundant while reduces unnecessary background information. We incorporate the robust learning-based feature extraction and matching methods, SuperPoint and SuperGlue, and zero velocity detection module to further reduce the uncertainty of visual odometry. Tested across various datasets, the proposed algorithm shows improved performance compared to other state-of-the-art VIO algorithms, paving the way for robust thermal-inertial odometry.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1933-1938
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• 2003

A covariance matrix is a tool that expresses odometry uncertainty of the wheeled mobile robot. The covariance matrix is a key factor in various localization algorithms such as Kalman filter, topological matching and so on. However it is not easy to acquire an accurate covariance matrix because we do not know the real states of the robot. Up to the authors knowledge, there seems to be no established result on the covariance matrix estimation for the odometry. In this paper, we propose a new method which can estimate the covariance matrix from empirical data. It is based on the PC-method and shows a good estimation ability. The experimental results validate the performance of the proposed method.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2008

Recently, automatic parking assist systems are commercially available in some cars. In order to improve the reliability and the accuracy of parking control, pose uncertainty of a vehicle and some experimental issues should be solved. In this paper, following three schemes are proposed. (1) Odometry calibration scheme for the Car-Like Mobile Robot.(CLMR) (2) Accurate localization using Extended Kalman Filter(EKF) based redundant odometry fusion. (3) Trajectory tracking controller to compensate the tracking error of the CLMR. The proposed schemes are experimentally verified using a miniature Car-Like Mobile Robot. This paper shows that odometry accuracy and trajectory tracking performance can be dramatically improved by using the proposed schemes.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.216-223
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• 2015

The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is being widely researched in order to achieve superior performance when working in hazardous environments. This research focuses on using image processing techniques to estimate the AUV's egomotion and the changes in orientation, based on image frames from different time frames captured from a single high-definition web camera attached to the bottom of the AUV. A visual odometry application is integrated with other sensors. An internal measurement unit (IMU) sensor is used to determine a correct set of answers corresponding to a homography motion equation. A pressure sensor is used to resolve image scale ambiguity. Uncertainty estimation is computed to correct drift that occurs in the system by using a Jacobian method, singular value decomposition, and backward and forward error propagation.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.263-269
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• 2008

Visual odometry is a popular approach to estimating robot motion using a monocular or stereo camera. This paper proposes a novel visual odometry scheme using a stereo camera for robust estimation of a 6 DOF motion in the dynamic environment. The false results of feature matching and the uncertainty of depth information provided by the camera can generate the outliers which deteriorate the estimation. The outliers are removed by analyzing the magnitude histogram of the motion vector of the corresponding features and the RANSAC algorithm. The features extracted from a dynamic object such as a human also makes the motion estimation inaccurate. To eliminate the effect of a dynamic object, several candidates of dynamic objects are generated by clustering the 3D position of features and each candidate is checked based on the standard deviation of features on whether it is a real dynamic object or not. The accuracy and practicality of the proposed scheme are verified by several experiments and comparisons with both IMU and wheel-based odometry. It is shown that the proposed scheme works well when wheel slip occurs or dynamic objects exist.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1771-1776
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• 2003

In mobile robot navigation, one of the key problems is the pose estimation of the mobile robot. Although the odometry can be used to describe the motions of the mobile robots quite simple and accurately, the validities of the models are limited by a number of error sources contaminating the encoder outputs so that applying the conventional extended Kalman filter to these nominal model does not yield the satisfactory performance. As a remedy for this problem, we consider the uncertain nonlinear kinematic model of the mobile robot that contains the norm bounded uncertainties and also propose a new robust extended Kalman filter based on the Krein space approach. The proposed robust filter has the same recursive structure as the conventional extended Kalman filter and can hence be readily designed to effectively account for the uncertainties. The computer simulations will be given to verify the robustness against the parameter variation as well as the reliable performance of the proposed robust filter.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.292-300
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• 2011

Global positioning system (GPS) is widely used to measure the position of a vehicle. However, the accuracy of the GPS can be severely affected by surrounding environmental conditions. To deal with this problem, the GPS and odometry data can be combined using an extended Kalman filter. For stable navigation of an outdoor mobile robot using the GPS, this paper proposes two methods to evaluate the reliability of the GPS data. The first method is to calculate the standard deviation of the GPS data and reflect it to deal with the uncertainty of the GPS data. The second method is to match the GPS data to the traversability map which can be obtained by classifying outdoor terrain data. By matching of the GPS data with the traversability map, we can determine whether to use the GPS data or not. The experimental results show that the proposed methods can enhance the performance of the GPS-based outdoor localization.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.26-30
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• 2018

Planetary global localization is necessary for long-range rover missions in which communication with command center operator is throttled due to the long distance. There has been number of researches that address this problem by exploiting and matching rover surroundings with global digital elevation maps (DEM). Using conventional methods for matching, however, is challenging due to artifacts in both DEM rendered images, and/or rover 2D images caused by DEM low resolution, rover image illumination variations and small terrain features. In this work, we use train CNN discriminator to match rover 2D image with DEM rendered images using conditional Generative Adversarial Network architecture (cGAN). We then use this discriminator to search an uncertainty bound given by visual odometry (VO) error bound to estimate rover optimal location and orientation. We demonstrate our network capability to learn to translate rover image into DEM simulated image and match them using Devon Island dataset. The experimental results show that our proposed approach achieves ~74% mean average precision.