Location of optical mouse sensors on mobile robots for odometry

Optical mouse sensors have been utilized recently to measure position of mobile robots. This work provides a systematic solution to the problem of locating N optical mouse sensors on a mobile robot with the aim of increasing the quality of the measurement. The developed analysis gives insights on how the selection of a particular configuration reflects on the quality of the measurement signal, and it allows to compare the effectiveness of different configurations. The set of all the optimal configurations is parameterized into two constraints. The results are derived from the analysis of the singular values of a particular matrix obtained by solving the sensor kinematics problem. Moreover, given any mobile robot platform, an end-user procedure is provided to select the best location for N optical mouse sensors on such a platform. The procedure consists of solving a feasible constrained optimization problem.