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Fiducial Markers and Particle Filter Based Localization and Navigation Framework for an Autonomous Mobile Robot

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Abstract

For collision-free autonomous navigation, pose estimation plays a pivotal role as it enables the robot to localize itself in the environment in which it is operating. A broad range of sensors are available for position and orientation estimation which are highly accurate and precise, but are contrariwise expensive. This work introduces a simple yet a robust method for estimating the robot pose via ArUco markers and particle filter. The proposed approach acquires position information from the tvec (translation vector) of the detected ArUco marker’s coordinate frame. Because of the flickering that incurs as a result of various factors in the detection of the ArUco markers, the measurement error and inaccuracy in establishing a feasible robot heading vector from the ArUco marker becomes more pronounced. Therefore, instead of acquiring the orientation information head-on from rvec, forward filtering-backward smoothing recursions are used for generating the heading vector (and consequently for spawing steering commands) based on the observations acquired from the camera. The Q matrix values are chosen considering anticipated process noise from the target’s position, speed, acceleration, heading angle, and turning rate. For the R matrix, values are selected based on the deviation in target states over time. Increasing the number of smoothing levels substantially reduces estimation errors. The smoothing filter proves to be crucial for correcting unexpected sensor information errors caused by environmental lighting conditions, system network data transfer lag, and unstable number of frames per second (fps). This study integrates the pure pursuit (PP) algorithm into the navigation framework for path following. Discretized PID control equations are employed to eliminate errors between desired and actual heading and speed of the robot. The system is simulated in a Gazebo environment and implemented on a 4-wheeled Ackermann drive mobile robot. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated using average speed, position, and heading errors. The findings showcase efficacy and robustness of the proposed method.

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Correspondence to Muhammad Shahab Alam.

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Alam, M.S., Gullu, A.I. & Gunes, A. Fiducial Markers and Particle Filter Based Localization and Navigation Framework for an Autonomous Mobile Robot. SN COMPUT. SCI. 5, 748 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-024-03090-y

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Keywords

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