A Fusion Algorithm for Building Maps in Confined Environments for Mobile Robots

Some problems associated with building map in confined environments for mobile robots are studied in this work. The uncertainties arising from specular reflection of ultrasonic sensors cannot make mobile robots recognize their surrounding environments correctly when mobile robots navigate in a confined environment. If the environment is known and unchanged, its map can be built with ultrasonic sensors in advance before navigation is performed. This map can provide reliable information about the environment when mobile robots work. A multi-layer fusion algorithm is proposed for building the map in advance. For the situation that the environment is unknown or variable, an adaptive ultrasonic sensor model is applied to build map dynamically. The experiment results indicate that the above fusion algorithms improve the performance of ultrasonic sensors