Localization: Approximation and Performance Bounds to Minimize Travel Distance

Abstract—Localization, which is the determination of one’s location in a known terrain, is a fundamental task for autonomous robots. This paper presents several new basic theoretical results about localization. We show that, even under the idealized assumptions of accurate sensing and perfect actuation, it is intrinsically difficult to localize a robot with a travel distance that is close to minimal. Our result helps to theoretically justify the common use of fast localization heuristics, such as greedy localization, which always moves the robot to a closest informative location (where the robot makes an observation that decreases the number of its possible locations). We show that the travel distance of greedy localization is much larger than minimal in some terrains because the closest informative location can distract greedy localization from a slightly farther, but much more informative, location. However, we also show that the travel distance of greedy localization can be lar...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TROB
• Authors: Craig A. Tovey, Sven Koenig
• Keywords: Greedy Localization, Terrains, Travel Distance, TROB 2010