Mobile Robot Localization Based on Questionnaire Study about Human Recognition in Outdoor

Mobile robot localization in outdoor is difficult because of environmental change such as sunlight intensity, moving obstacles layout, etc. In this article, questionnaire study on human ability of environmental recognition was carried out and its results were applied to mobile robot localization. The result of questionnaire shows that a human relies on globally visual information such as landscape rather than information of landmarks such as signboards. Based on the result, a view-based localization method using GIST features was proposed. GIST is known to represent well the overview of outdoor scene. A capture scene image is compared all registered template images in terms of GIST, e.g., the template image, of which L2 norm of GIST between input image is minimum, is successively searched. Then, the robot is localized so as that it exists in the neighborhood of known place where the template image was captured. Experimental result in the course of Tsukuba Challenge 2015 showed the good potential of proposed method to localize a mobile robot.