Visual map matching and localization using a global feature map

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method to support environmental perception of mobile robots by the use of a global feature map. While typical approaches to simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) mainly rely on an on-board camera for mapping, our approach uses geographically referenced aerial or satellite images to build a map in advance. The current position on the map is determined by matching features from the on-board camera to the global feature map. The problem of feature matching is posed as a standard point pattern matching problem and a solution using the iterative closest point method is given.