Landmark Detection Based on Sensor Fusion for Mobile Robot Navigation in a Varying Environment

We propose a space and time based sensor fusion method and a robust landmark detecting algorithm based on sensor fusion for mobile robot navigation. To fully utilize the information from the sensors, first, this paper proposes a new sensor-fusion technique where the data sets for the previous moments are properly transformed and fused into the current data sets to enable an accurate measurement. Exploration of an unknown environment is an important task for the new generation of mobile robots. The mobile robots may navigate by means of a number of monitoring systems such as the sonar-sensing system or the visual-sensing system. The newly proposed, STSF (Space and Time Sensor Fusion) scheme is applied to landmark recognition for mobile robot navigation in an unstructured environment as well as structured environment, and the experimental results demonstrate the performances of the landmark recognition.