An improved adaptive FastSLAM algorithm with time‐varying noise estimator

Abstract

Abstract In this study, an adaptive FastSLAM (AFastSLAM) algorithm, which is obtained by estimating the time‐varying noise statistics and improving FastSLAM algorithm, is proposed. This improvement was accomplished by using maximum likelihood estimation and expectation maximization criterion and a one‐step smoothing algorithm in importance sampling. In addition, innovation covariance estimation (ICE) method was used to prevent loss of positive definiteness of the process and measurement noise covariance matrices. The proposed method was compared with FastSLAM by calculating the root mean square error (RMSE) using different particle numbers at varying initial process and measurement noise values. Simulation studies have shown that AFastSLAM provides much more accurate, consistent, and successful estimates than FastSLAM for both robot and landmark positions.