A low-cost robot using omni-directional vision enables insect-like behaviors

RAMBLER Robot is designed for researching insect inspired behavioral control algorithms. To evaluate these algorithms, RAMBLER Robot needs autonomous localization without typical sensors like wheel odometers or GPS. The primary objective of this work is to independently, accurately, and robustly recover the path of a moving robotic system with low-cost sensors available off-the-shelf. The computationally efficient power center method of triangulation is compared to a particle filter approach. With three passive indistinguishable landmarks at corners of a small arena, RAMBLER Robot successfully localizes with an RMS error of 2.27cm compared to an overhead camera ground truth.