Keeping track of position and orientation of moving indoor systems by correlation of range-finder scans

One of the problems of autonomous mobile systems is the continuous tracking of position and orientation. In most cases, this problem is solved by dead reckoning, based on measurement of wheel rotations or step counts and step width. Unfortunately dead reckoning leads to accumulation of drift errors and is very sensitive against slippery. In this paper an algorithm for tracking position and orientation is presented being nearly independent from odometry and its problems with slippery. To achieve this results, a rotating range-finder is used, delivering scans of the environmental structure. The properties of this structure are used to match the scans from different locations in order to find their translational and rotational displacement. For this purpose derivatives of range-finder scans are calculated which can be used to find position and orientation by crosscorrelation.