Line Segment Based Scan Matching for Concurrent Mapping and Localization of a Mobile Robot

This paper describes a new approach to align the laser scans in order to build a consistent map of the environment of a mobile robot. There are no physical landmarks and the environment is completely unknown. Our method finds the nearest matching lines in the scans and resolves the data correspondence problem. The global consistency and final map is achieved by the formulation of geometrical constraints and solving them using conjugate gradient method. The method can handle the multiple loop closing problem. This is easy to implement and fully integrated with a complete navigational architecture. The proposed algorithm is implemented using C++ programming libraries and tested in a real-time robotic simulation environment.