概要

This paper describes real time 3D modeling of the environment for a mobile robot. A real time laser range finder is mounted on the robot, and obtains a range image sequence of the environment while moving around. In this paper, we detail our method that accomplished simultaneous localization and 3D modeling by aligning the acquired range images. The method incrementally aligns range images in real time by a variant of the iterative closest point (ICP) method. By estimating the uncertainty of range measurements, we introduce a new weighting scheme into the aligning framework. In an experiment, we first evaluate the accuracy of the localization results by aligning range images. Second, we show the results of modeling and localization when a robot moves along a meandering path. Finally, we summarize the conditions and limitations required of the robot’s motion and the environment for our method to work well.