Simultaneous localization assistance for multiple mobile robots using particle filter based target tracking

Research in the areas of localization, mapping and path planning for single mobile robots has been carried out extensively. Nevertheless, relatively little of its work is applied to multiple robot systems. Moreover, when these robots coexist with human, complex and unpredictable human environments make the above navigational tasks even more challenging. To address this problem we propose intelligent assistance, a novel scheme to assist mobile robots by providing localization information externally. This scheme aims to combine the research fields of autonomous mobile robot navigation and target tracking. The mobile robots are detected using a laser range finder and camera based sensor unit. Using Rao-Blackwellized particle filter technique, the sensory information is integrated in a probabilistic manner and the mobile robots that need assistance are continuously tracked. We maneuver the non-holonomic constraint of mobile robots together with suitable state variables to obtain the heading angle of the robot. The preliminary experiments show the validity of the proposed scheme for simultaneous localization assistance for multiple mobile robots.