On the consistency of EKF-SLAM: Focusing on the observation models

— In this paper a new strategy for handling the observation information of a bearing-range sensor throughout the filtering process of EKF-SLAM is proposed. This new strategy is advised based on a thorough consistency analysis and aims to improve the process consistency while reducing the computational cost. At first, three different possible observation models are introduced for the EKF-SLAM solution for a robot equipped with a bearing-range sensor. General form of the covariance matrix and the level of inconsistency in the robot orientation estimate is then calculated for these variants, and based on the numerical comparison of the estimation results, it is proposed to use the bearing and range information of a feature in the initialization step of EKF-SLAM. However, it is recommended to use only the bearing information to perform other iteration steps. The simulation observations verify that the new strategy yields to more consistent estimates both for the robot and the features....

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IROS
• Authors: Amir Hossein Tamjidi, Hamid D. Taghirad, Ali Akbar Aghamohammadi
• Keywords: Bearing-range Sensor, Consistency, Consistency Analysis, IROS 2009, Robotics