Handling Environment Dynamics in Medial Axis Based Localization

Abstract

For mobile robot localization we use a map based on the medial axis of free space. It combines the generality of occupancy grids with the efficiency of geometric feature maps. In contrast to these, no global consistent coordinate frame is needed and no special features like lines or corner points need to be present in the environment. Therefore the approach is very universal with respect to the size and type of environment. However, the ordinary medial axis is not robust with respect to new objects in formerly free space. For our approach to be useful in dynamic environments, this decisive disadventage of medial axis based localization needs to be overcome. This paper presents two solutions for this problem, after shortly sketching the map building and locazation process of our MALoc system.