Environment identification by comparing maps of landmarks

Abstract

This paper describes a method for identifying an environment a robot is operating in by comparing the geometry of landmarks of a map the robot is currently building with a set of previously created maps. Landmark maps are created using the stochastic map approach originally presented by Smith, Self and Cheeseman [1990]. The paper provides a method for measuring the similarity of such maps and presents a closed form solution for the special case that covariances are constant. Experiments carried out on a developer version of the AlBO robot and on a prototype of the humanoid SDR-4X robot show that the approach is applicable even for robots with poor odometry.