Real time localisation of a mobile robot using Webcam data

Localization is one of the most important functions for the mobile robot navigation. Most of previous position estimation methods calculate current position and orientation of mobile robot by applying various localization schemes with the information obtained from internal sensors which are set on the mobile robot, or by recognizing an artificial landmark attached on the environment. Several drawbacks about them have been brought up. To avoid these inconvenient, a new localization method that calculate in real time the absolute position of the mobile robot by using external camera fixed on the ceiling in the indoor environment is proposed. Besides, this approach provide a low expensive solution using a Webcam. The effectiveness of the proposed localization algorithm is demonstrated through the experiments.