Mobile Robot Navigation Under Pose Uncertainty in Unknown Environments

The navigation of a mobile robot under uncertainty in its pose information in an unknown environment is the subject of this paper. The mobile robot is equipped with a limited-field of view limited-range finder and a magnetometer to infer its orientation. The target location is known, while the robot's localization suffers from measurement errors. The uncertainty is taken into consideration by calculation of the Guaranteed Visibility and Guaranteed Sensed Area, where safe navigation can be assumed regardless of the measurement error. A switching objective function initially guarantees the exploration towards the target area and afterwards safely guides the robot towards it. Simulation results that prove the efficiency of the proposed scheme are presented.