Towards a topological representation of indoor environments: a landmark-based approach

Describes a two-level representation of indoor environments as an intermediate goal towards the topological description of the navigation area in which a mobile robot performs its tasks. Geometric features detected by the exteroceptive sensors of the vehicle are grouped into landmarks, which are characterized by a local reference frame. Each of these landmarks is expressed with respect to a global reference frame. The proposed approach provides a common framework for both the absolute location of the vehicle with respect to the global reference frame, and for its relative location with respect to the landmark frames. A complete representation of the environment is incrementally constructed while the mobile robot is relocalized along its trajectory. A probabilistic representation of uncertain geometric information is used (the SP-model). Experimental results obtained with the mobile robot HILARE-2bis and its 2D laser range finder are presented to validate the approach