Integrating line segment based maps in multi-robots exploration

Exploring unknown environment by Multi-robots brings the problem of partial maps integrating. In traditional methods, global map building is almost based on an estimate of robot pose (i.e., its position and orientation). In this paper we propose an improved approach without robots' pose information to integrate maps into a unified coordinate system. Line segment based geometric features in common part of partial maps are used for map matching. Local maps are integrated into a global map based on geometric relationships of line segments. Moreover, we reduce the computation of map matching and improve the accuracy rate of integrating in similar landform. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our approach in structured environment. © 2009 IEEE.