A perception-driven exploration hierarchical simultaneous localization and mapping for mobile robots adapted to search and rescue environments

Abstract

Perception-driven hierarchical simultaneous localization and mapping approach is proposed based on a distributed particle of percolator model adapted to search and rescue post-disaster environment. The proposed hierarchical analysis reduced the complexity; it can only highlight the interesting three-dimensional objects marked on the two-dimensional map, which adapted to urgent search and rescue post-disaster scenarios. Object identification, area coverage, and loop closure are the key issues that simultaneous localization and mapping faces when mobile robots detect and reach survivors in search and rescue collapsed environments. We developed hierarchical analysis using iterative extended Kalman filter method to improve the localization accuracy in simultaneous localization and mapping of mobile robots with an iteration process. An analytic hierarchical map-building mechanism efficiently constructs a globally consistent topological map using graph-based nodes and data association. An improved iterative extended Kalman filter procedure is used to estimate positions and the covariance matrix. The proposed algorithm incorporates a prediction step and a measurement update step, which performs the state vector time update in constant time interval and the correction of the state vector based on the new sensor measurement. The hierarchical mapping process is divided into three levels. The bottom level perceives the surroundings and collects input. The middle level receives and processes data from the bottom level. The upper level organizes the feature information from the previous levels to form a global, topologically consistent map. Simulations and experiments using the mobileRobot platform, Pioneer LX robot, and a crawler mobile robot validate the efficiency of this hierarchical simultaneous localization and mapping approach adapting to search and rescue post-disaster scenarios.