Growing Cell Structures Applied to Sensor Fusion and SLAM

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of topological maps in order to implement a SLAM approach, based on sensor fusion, to deal better with the problem of inaccuracy and uncertainty in sensor data. The contribution of this work is an algorithm that uses multiple sensory sources and multiple topological maps to improve the estimation of localization as generic as possible. We can obtain better results when this is made with sensors of clashing characteristics, because something not perceived by a sensor might be perceived by others, therefore we can also reduce the effects of measurement error, obtaining a method that works with uncertainties of the sensors. A system was developed to validate the proposed method, through a series of tests with a set of real data. The results show the robustness of the system in relation to sensorial imprecision and gain in predicting the robot's location, resulting in a more appropriate method to deal with errors associated to each sensor.