Study on Boundary Creation and Identification and Localization Error Correction for Outdoor Area-covering Mobile Robots

For area-covering mobile robots working in the outdoor unstructured environment, a strategy of unmarked area boundary creation and identification is proposed. The designed localization system and the matching algorithm using the digital map serve the robot to navigate in the work area. The method of localization error-correction based on the environmental features using ultrasonic sensors array is adopted. The features are matched with the digital map to correct the localization errors during the robot’s real-time coverage operation. The results of experiment show that the localization system with the error-correction method is reliable to ensure the accurate area-covering behaviors of the robot.