Velocity estimation using EKF for caster odometers — Numerical verification

In this paper, velocity estimation method for caster odometers is proposed. Caster odometer is a sensor of travel distance and attitude angle using caster mechanism that has two-degree of rotational freedoms. We calculate velocities of a vehicle utilizing the output measured by caster odometers, however, the caster mechanism has nonlinearity component. To deal with the nonlinearity of the caster mechanism, a velocity is estimated by the extended Kalman filter. It is expected to reduce the effect of noise with higher precision than conventional methods (approximated differentiation, extended Luenberger observer). We confirm the accuracy of the proposed estimation by comparing to the conventional method in numerical simulation.