Cleaning up smart cities — Localization of semi-autonomous floor scrubber

The paper describes design and features of novel semi-autonomous floor scrubber add-on module, used for cleaning large indoor and outdoor tile/marbles spaces found in modern (smart) cities. Module is designed in such a manner that it can be easily added to and removed from scrubber machine and that additional sensors and capabilities can be introduced (modular design). In the paper localization capabilities of the machine in three sensor setups are presented and analyzed. Analysis is performed in terms of localization accuracy and reliability as well as associated advantages and disadvantages. Obtained results demonstrated that inclusion of UWB subsystem, despite its price and accuracy (±20 cm in ideal, line of sight, conditions), yields more reliable and accurate results in open spaces (up to 25 times in position and 2 times in orientation) where performance of used Lidar might be sub-optimal.