Heterogeneous multirobot cleaning system: State and parameter estimation

Abstract

This paper presents a heterogeneous multirobot cleaning system, Jacana, and its performance test with respect to state and parameter estimation. This system aims for autonomous cleaning by robots with limited capabilities and consists of a cleaning robot for wet cleaning, a sensing one for gathering robots' and environmental data, and a server PC for processing the collected data. For the system, the feasibility of the state and parameters estimation of the cleaning robot is demonstrated with experimental data by applying the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) with a system model considering the kinematics and input transition of the cleaning robot and observation by the sensing one. The results show that the proposed system can adequately estimate the state and parameters of the cleaning robot, although the system also requires improvement in autonomous cleaning. Consequently, the proposed system has the capability to accomplish autonomous cleaning with less acquisition costs and high flexibility.