Measurement and Correction of Systematic Odometry Errors Caused by Kinematics Imperfections in Mobile Robots

This paper addresses an innovative method for the measurement and correction of systematic odometry errors caused by the kinematics imperfections in the differential drive mobile robots. An occasional systematic calibration of the mobile robot increases the odometric accuracy and reduces operational cost, as less frequent absolute positioning updates are required during the operation. Conventionally, the tests used for this purpose (e.g.. UMBmark test) are relatively difficult to perform and are very sensitive to non-systematic errors and requires a large number of tests with precise measurements of the final position and orientation of the robot to get better accuracy. This paper describes a novel method for calibration of differential drive mobile robots. The method is systematic, very simple to perform and insensitive to the random errors and hence provides near optimal results (with respect to the systematic errors) in a single test due to its inherent robustness. Simulation results are presented which shows the significant improvement in the odometric accuracy with less effort.