OptiOdom: a Generic Approach for Odometry Calibration of Wheeled Mobile Robots

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2022

Authors

Sousa, RB (Author) FEUP; Petry, MR (Author) Other; Paulo Gomes da Costa (Author) FEUP; António Paulo Moreira (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems: Theory and Applications

Vol. 105

Final page: 39

ISSN: 0921-0296

Publisher: Springer Nature

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 3 Citations

Scopus - 6 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00W-PY0

DOI: 10.1007/s10846-022-01630-3

Abstract (EN): Odometry calibration adjusts the kinematic parameters or directly the robot's model to improve the wheeled odometry accuracy. The existent literature considers in the calibration procedure only one steering geometry (differential drive, Ackerman/tricycle, or omnidirectional). Our method, the OptiOdom calibration algorithm, generalizes the odometry calibration problem. It is developed an optimization-based approach that uses the improved Resilient Propagation without weight-backtracking (iRprop-) for estimating the kinematic parameters using only the position data of the robot. Even though a calibration path is suggested to be used in the calibration procedure, the OptiOdom method is not path-specific. In the experiments performed, the OptiOdom was tested using four different robots on a square, arbitrary, and suggested calibration paths. The OptiTrack motion capture system was used as a ground-truth. Overall, the use of OptiOdom led to improvements in the odometry accuracy (in terms of maximum distance and absolute orientation errors over the path) over the existent literature while being a generalized approach to the odometry calibration problem. The OptiOdom and the methods from the literature implemented in the article are available in GitHub as an open-source repository.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 22