Natural landmark based localisation system using panoramic images

A panoramic image based localisation system has been implemented on a B21r mobile robot and tested in a heavily cluttered environment. It takes vertical object edges as natural landmarks and extracts a one-dimensional token sequence from the input image before matching with reference image sequences. Matched points are then triangulated to give a set of position estimates, and the best result is taken as the current robot position. Selection criteria and methods for the reference image sites are also discussed, including the use of generalised Voronoi vertices.