A fast, accurate and robust method for self-localization in polygonal environments using laser range finders

Self-localization is important in almost all robotic tasks. For playing an aesthetic and effective game of robotic soccer, self-localization is a necessary prerequisite. When we designed our robotic soccer team for participating in robotic soccer competitions, it turned out that all existing approaches did not meet our requirements of being fast, accurate, and robust. For this reason, we developed a new method, which is presented and analyzed in this paper. This method is one of the key components and is probably one of the explanations for the success of our team in national and international competitions. We present also experimental evidence that our method outperforms other self-localization methods in the RoboCup environment.