Robust Localization of a Mobile Robot Using Information Retrieval Techniques

Localization is the ability for a mobile robot to know its position at all times. Most of the time, the localization process has to manage several possible positions that could correspond to the real one. The main drawback is that the cost of computational complexity could be high especially when the position of the mobile robot in its environment is unknown. In this paper, we present a new method to perform localization. The main interest of our method is that it is able to determine in a fast and robust way the best positions, using information retrieval techniques, that could correspond to the real one. Moreover, the number of positions is automatically adapted according to the confidence that we have in the localization of the robot. Experimental results show the benefits of the method.