Navigation of Autonomous Systems in Outdoor Environments

Jahr:  2010

Service robots autonomously mow greens and pull out weeds in large parks or sports facilities. Tourists are most comfortably brought to the respective places of interest or accompanied on a fair. Disabled persons and elderly people find help in dealing with everyday routines. There are countless examples like the aforementioned ones, when service robots support individuals. To be able to solve the given tasks effciently the robot always has to know his present location thus constantly looking for the answer to the question: "Where am I?".

To find the answer to this question we devolop new procedures and mathematical models for navigating autonomous systems. In this special case, we focus on the navigation in unknown, natural surroundings. In contrast to indoor navigation, where the environment is structured by straight walls, doors and flat floors, the obstacles and objects available in outdoor environments to determine the navigation are much more complex. Form and surface of the objects (trees, bushes, buildings etc.) are irregular and change over time. Influences such as wind can hardly be described using unambiguous mathematical models. By fusing different sensors such as GPS, compass, laser scanner, wheel sensors and inertial circles we suceed in autonomously generating environment models of the working area. By using these maps localization is possible with a tolerance of only a few centimetres.