Position Determination Using Landmark Localization for a Mobile Robot

An artificial landmark-based, automatic navigation system was developed for a small-scale field robot. Several low-cost sensing techniques were involved in the system to detect surroundings and determine the position of the moving robot. Several tests were conducted to evaluate the accuracy of linear distance and angular displacement using dead-reckoning with a gyro-correction, overall performance of the gyroscope used, and effectiveness of an artificial-landmark-based automatic navigation. The accuracy of the position determination methods based on dead-reckoning only, dead-reckoning with a gyro-correction, and laser-range-finder (LRF)-based methods was tested, analyzed, and compared, respectively. The results of the automatic navigation tests showed that LRF-based position estimation was much more accurate when compared to the dead-reckoning and dead-reckoning with gyroscope correction approaches. It had the ability to navigate the testing robot with a high accuracy.