Robust Sensor-Based

Navigation for Mobile Robots

Peshala G Jayasekara, M1
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT,
VOL. 58, NO. 3, MARCH 2009

Immanuel A. R. Ashokaraj, Peter M. G. Silson, Antonios Tsourdos, Member, IEEE, and

Brian A. White
 Outline
• Motivation
• Introduction
• Interval Analysis
• Approach
• Map
• Algorithms
• Localization
• Results
• Conclusion
– Evaluation and Opinion
 Motivation
• A deterministic approach for sensor-based localization
and navigation of a mobile robot

• Try to avoid computational complexity and linearity found

in classical methods such as Kalman Filter

• The interval analysis method proposed in this paper

bypasses the data-association step and directly deals
with the nonlinear problem in a global way
 Introduction
• Addresses the problem of localization of a four-
wheeled mobile robot with ultrasonic sensors using
“Interval Analysis”

• Map of the environment is available - priori

 Interval Analysis (I)
• Interval analysis is based on the set theory and
gives a guaranteed approximation of the set of
all the actual solutions of the problem being
considered

• Defines operations on intervals rather than

individual numbers

• Interval Arithmetic even span vectors, matrices

 Interval Analysis (II)
• Basic Definitions and Notations

• Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division

The basic operations of interval arithmetic are, for two intervals [a, b] and [c, d] that
are subsets of the real line (-∞, ∞),

[a,b] + [c,d] = [a + c, b + d]
[a,b] - [c, d] = [a - d, b - c]
[a,b] x [c,d] = [min (ac, ad, bc, bd), max (ac, ad, bc, bd)]
[a,b] / [c,d] = [min (a/c, a/d, b/c, b/d), max (a/c, a/d, b/c, b/d)]

• Example
 Interval Analysis (III)
• Essential Operations
– Computing an interval that contains the image
of [x] using f obtained due to the notion of
inclusion function

– The notion of inclusion test that tests whether

[x] belongs to S or not
– The contraction of [x] w.r.t S
 Approach (I)
• The problem is to estimate the vector p = (xc,
yc , θ) from
– a map representing the environment of the robot and
– from the distance measurements provided by a belt of
ns ultrasonic sensors present in the mobile robot

• When the bounds on the measurement error

are known,
– then the resulting distance measurement in terms of
the intervals stored in an interval vector is given by
 Approach (II)
• If a model of the ultrasonic sensor interval distance measurements
represented by interval vector dm(p) when the robot configuration p
is available, then the robot localization problem becomes a bounded
error parameter estimation problem, particularly that characterizing
the set

• Since the task is to find p

– for a given configuration vector p, the robot evaluates the
measurements that its sensors return and compares them with the
actual measurements to check whether they are consistent

• The described problem can then be solved using one of two

approaches:
– set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA)
– image subpaving (ImageSP).
 Map (I)
• Definition
– The map M = {[aj, bj ]|j = 1, . . . , nw} of the robot’s environment is
assumed to consist of nw oriented segments with extremes [aj, bj ] that
describe the obstacles and all the landmarks.
– By convention, when going from aj to bj , the reflecting face of the
segment is on the left
 Map (II)
• Measurement Process Model
– For any given sensor i and configuration vector p, the distance that
would be obtained if only one segment of the map were present is
computed.
– This is then repeated for all the segments in the map. The final distance
taken as the ith sensor reading (remoteness) will be the smallest of the
distances computed for all the segments of the map
Algorithms
 Localization (I)
• To check whether a given state x is consistent with the
measured outputs {[di]}ns i=1,
– the robot evaluates the measurements that its sensors would return if it
were in the state x and compares them with the actual measurements.
– The test t(x) must hold true if and only if they are deemed compatible

• The state x is consistent with all measurements (and thus

t(x) = 1)
– if all ri's (remoteness) are consistent with the map
 Localization (II)
• SIVIA – Set Inversion Via Interval Analysis

– if t[]([po]) = 1, then po is in the solution set P and is stored

– If t[]([po]) = 0, then [po] has an empty intersection with P and is dropped
from further consideration
– If t[]([po]) = [0, 1] and the width of [po] is larger than the pre-specified
precision parameter ε, then po is bisected, leading to two child
subboxes L(p) and R(p), and test t[](.) is recursively applied to both of
them. Any box with a width smaller than ε is considered to be small
enough and is added to P.
– This algorithm is finite, and its complexity has been studied

• ImageSP Evaluation Procedure

– When f is not invertible
 Localization (III)
• Once the robot knows its position at any given instant of
time, it can use this information to narrow down the initial
configuration vector [po] to reduce the computational
time
– Use the physical limitations of the robot to predict [po]
 Results (I)
• SIVIA Algorithm
 Results (II)
• ImageSP Algorithm
 Conclusion
• A basic introduction to interval analysis and its
application to the problem of robot localization

• The localization procedure used here for

tracking the mobile robot does not suffer from
the same disadvantages of commonly used
localization procedures such as EKF

• As the next step, the authors want to incorporate

sensor fusion
 Evaluation and Opinion
• Authors have tried a different approach rather
than sticking into Kalman filter

• We can try using this method for laser range

finder instead of ultrasonic sensors

• At the presence of dynamic obstacles, suitability

of this algorithm is not very clear
Thank you

Questions??