A Consolidation of SLAM and Signal Reference Point for Autonomous Robot Navigation

Robot navigation, heavily, utilizes sensors to identify its current location and to guide forward into its designated position. This movement is achievable, mostly, via semi or fully autonomous navigation method that has a pre-built map. However, we argue that an autonomous robot navigation should not only provide route path to go to their target location, it should also has a feature to return to their starting position or reference location. In this work, an autonomous robot navigation has been built using combination of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) and signal of a device as reference point to find the original position. We make use of Turtlebot2 robot with Kinect sensor to create map, and Infrared beam to create the home signal guidance. In achieving target location, robot uses SLAM that has Odometry to track the distance, where at the same time sensing the presence of homing signal. Then, it returns to its home location by tracking the navigation map and home signal to find the best route path. Our result shows that the combination of SLAM and signal reference point has simplified the autonomous robot navigation management.