Randomized Algorithms for Minimum Distance Localization

The problem of minimum distance localization in environments that may contain self-similarities is addressed. A mobile robot is placed at an unknown location inside a 2D self-similar polygonal environment P. The robot has a map of P and can compute visibility data through sensing. However, the self-similarities in the environment mean that the same visibility data may correspond to several different locations. The goal, therefore, is to determine the robot’s true initial location while minimizing the distance traveled by the robot. Two randomized approximation algorithms are presented that solve minimum distance localization. The performance of the proposed algorithms is evalu-