Integrating internode measurements in sum of Gaussians range only SLAM

Abstract

This paper proposes a Range Only-SLAM method based on Sums of Gaussians (SoG) that integrates direct robot-beacon measurements together with measurements between static beacons. It exploits the fact that most commercial off-the-shelf beacons can communicate and organize into sensor networks and can compute range measurements to other beacons. The proposed method adopts a scheme based on Sums of Gaussians, which allows integrating direct robot-beacon measurements in an undelayed way, which is a significant advantage particularly in environments where the robot has bad odometry. The method has been implemented and validated in real experiments performed in the CONET Robot-WSN Integrated Testbed. The proposed method achieves a reduction of 70% in map error and significant improvement in robot pose accuracy when compared to traditional schemes.