Design and experimental validation of an odometric and goniometric localization system for outdoor robot vehicles

A two-dimensional (2-D) mobile robot localization system which uses odometry and the azimuth angles of known landmarks is presented. Observability analysis helps to determine situations where such a system may undergo difficulties, and gives information on its behavior when one of the beacons is hidden. Experimental results are presented. Index Terms - Dynamic localization, Kalman filtering, multisensor integration, nonlinear observability, optical triangulation system, outdoor mobile robot.