High-robust Localization Method For Rail-mounted Robot

Mobile robots are widely applied in both industrial field, like automatic logistics and inspection, and civil use, like smart car and home service robot. Self localization technology is one of the critical technology in mobile robot. And the robustness and the precision in localization would determine the efficiency and reliability of the mobile robot system to a very large extent.Landmark aided localization technology is a very large group of robot localization methods. Using this group of localization methods, the robot detects the landmarks, which are arranged among its working environment, and calculates its pose based one the detection results. Due to its advantage, including the high stability of the feature of landmarks, simplicity of the system and the high robustness, this group of localization method is widely used.This paper aims at the shortcoming of the currently used landmark aided localization technology, which is the lack of capability of dealing with disturbance during landmarks detection. The relationship between the arrangement of the landmarks and the robustness of the localization is analyzed, and a optimization target function is proposed.Two of the arrangement methods is also proposed, with one of which is based on heuristic algorithm and the other is base one M-sequence. The performance of the robot localization with both of the two methods of landmarks arrangement, together with the random landmarks arrangement, are compared and analyzed.The rail-mounted robot system for substation inspection, which is also the experiment platform of the method mentioned above, is introduced. The the hardware and software of the robot is introduced in details, including the railway system, the motion system, the electric system and the control system.Finally, experiments is conducted on the rail-mounted robot system in its application environment. The experiment including the basic performance test,the robot localization experiment and the robustness experiment. According to the results, the basic function of the rail-mounted robot system satisfied its operating requirement. And the localization method is capable of dealing with the disturbance in localization like wheel-slipping and landmark detecting failure. Therefore, the robustness of the system is validated.