Multi-scale Point and Line Range Data Algorithms for Mapping and Localization

This paper presents a multi-scale point and line based representation of two-dimensional range scan data. The techniques are based on a multi-scale Hough transform and a tree representation of the environment's features. The multiscale representation can lead to improved robustness and computational efficiencies in basic operations, such as matching and correspondence, that commonly arise in many localization and mapping procedures. For multi-scale matching and correspondence we introduce a χ^2 criterion that is calculated from the estimated variance in position of each detected line segment or point. This improved correspondence method can be used as the basis for simple scan-matching displacement estimation, as a part of a SLAM implementation, or as the basis for solutions to the kidnapped robot problem. Experimental results (using a Sick LMS-200 range scanner) show the effectiveness of our methods.