Efficient placement of beacons for localization of mobile robots considering the positional uncertainty distributions

Localization performance depends upon the uncertainties of estimated positions. Although there have been many researches made to reduce the uncertainty, the intrinsic characteristic of uncertainty has not been efficiently considered. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel localization method that can considerably reduce the positional uncertainty of a mobile robot by focusing on the uncertainty distributions of the motion model and the sensor model. More specifically, we suggest beacon placement techniques in which the uncertainty distributions from odometry and ultrasonic beacons are considered. Simulation results show that the proposed method provides reliable localization performance in an environment where the number of installed beacons is smaller than that required of the conventional methods.