On sample diversity in Particle Filter based robot SLAM

This article proposed a simple and effective methodology for improving diversity of samples in Particle Filter (PF). The motivation lies in the situation that resampling procedure which aims for amending particle degeneracy always leads to particle depletion and less diversity of particles has severe consequence on the filter estimation accuracy. Various resample approaches have been developed in recent years, including multi-nominal resample, residual resample, stratified resample and systematic resample. All of them, however, will inevitably lead to lose of diversity in scatter of particles because they simply replace lower weighed particles with higher weighed particles. In this paper, we developed practical MCMC solutions for drawing particles for PF. The selections of proposal distribution and convergent chain node are taken into careful considerations. It is revealed from the simulations and real experiment that the proposed resampling method is capable of improving the performance of Particle Filter.