Text-MCL: Autonomous Mobile Robot Localization in Similar Environment Using Text-Level Semantic Information

摘要

Localization is one of the most important issues in mobile robotics, especially when an autonomous mobile robot performs a navigation task. The current and popular occupancy grid map, based on 2D LiDar simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), is suitable and easy for path planning, and the adaptive Monte Carlo localization (AMCL) method can realize localization in most of the rooms in indoor environments. However, the conventional method fails to locate the robot when there are similar and repeated geometric structures, like long corridors. To solve this problem, we present Text-MCL, a new method for robot localization based on text information and laser scan data. A coarse-to-fine localization paradigm is used for localization: firstly, we find the coarse place for global localization by finding text-level semantic information, and then get the fine local localization using the Monte Carlo localization (MCL) method based on laser data. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach improves the global localization speed and success rate to 96.2% with few particles. In addition, the mobile robot using our proposed approach can recover from robot kidnapping after a short movement, while conventional MCL methods converge to the wrong position.