Exploiting Multi-hop Inter-beacon Measurements in RO-SLAM

Abstract

This paper presents a Range Only (RO) Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) scheme that integrates multi-hop inter- beacon range measurements. While few SLAM schemes use inter-beacon measurements, to the best of our knowledge, none of them integrates multi-hop inter-beacon measurements. In our scheme the robot gathers inter-beacon measurements with config- urable hop number so that it can integrate measurements between beacons far beyond the robot's sensing range. This paper analyzes the impact of integrating in SLAM inter-beacon measurements with different hop numbers and evaluates its performance and ro- bustness to measurement and odometry noise levels. It shows that the advantages of using inter-beacon measurements increase with measurements with higher hop numbers.