On the Accuracy and Efficiency of Sensing and Localization for Robotics

Abstract

In recent robotic applications, a critical need is to simultaneously detect communication (emission state) and estimate its trajectory. Whilst wireless sensor observations are useful, they are often uncertain due to the stochastic communication bursts and robot mobility. Over-sampling the information environment can incur excessive radio interference and energy usage. Therefore, one challenge is how to improve the efficiency of sensing under sparse and dynamic information, and make accurate inference on the robot's location. Here, we design a novel mixed detection and estimation (MDE) scheme to enhance both the accuracy and the efficiency by exploiting the mobility pattern correlations. Relying on a Markov state-space model, dynamic behaviors of robot's communication state and movement are formulated. A two-stage sequential Bayesian scheme, premised on random finite set (RFS), is developed to detect and estimate the involved unknown states. Specifically, in order to counteract the probability likelihood disappearance (caused by no information emission) and improve robustness to ambient noise, a sequential pre-filtering technique is designed, which can refine local observations and thereby significantly improve the accuracy of the system. We validate the proposed MDE scheme via both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, demonstrating it would improve both the detection and estimation accuracy and efficiency.