Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Mechatronics and Smart Systems

DOI: 10.54254/2755-2721/9/20230055

Analysis and application research of mobile robot navigation

related technologies

Yuheng Fu1,3,✝,Qinyou Zhou2,✝

1
University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
2
Ulink College of Shanghai, Shanghai, China

3
[email protected]
✝
These authors contributed equally.

Abstract: With social progress and technological development, mobile robots have played an
important role in industries, medical care, safety, home and other fields due to their advantages
of saving labor costs, reducing personnel work intensity, and avoiding potential job hazards.
Especially in indoor environments, such as industrial indoor operations, warehousing and
logistics distribution, indoor safety patrols, and other application scenarios, mobile robots have
highlighted inestimable application value. Intelligent mobile robot is an important tool in the
field of service and automation, and robot navigation technology is an important technology for
intelligent mobile robot to achieve self-positioning, robot mapping and path planning. This paper
expounds three technologies of mobile robot navigation mapping: visual mapping and
positioning, lidar mapping and positioning, and sensor fusion mapping and positioning. After
that, the method of path planning of the mobile robot is analyzed. Finally, the application of
intelligent mobile robots in factory automation and supermarket guidance is pointed out, and the
development trend of intelligent mobile robots is prospected.

Keywords: intelligent mobile robot, robot navigation, mapping and positioning, path planning.

1. Introduction
In recent years, similar to information technology, microelectronics technology, artificial intelligence
technology as a symbol of the development of modern science and technology, has entered a stage of
rapid development [1].
Mobile robots are new types of robots that can rely on their own sensors to perceive and understand
the external environment, make real-time decisions according to task needs, carry out closed-loop
control, operate in an autonomous or semi-autonomous manner, and have certain self-learning and
adaptability in known or unknown environments. The application field of mobile robots is very
extensive, and there are currently related application directions in service, rescue, agriculture, medical
and other fields [2].
The application and development of mobile robots can reduce the cost of human resources, the use
of intelligent mobile robots for the transportation of goods in factories or workshops can significantly
improve the efficiency of transshipment, and the use of intelligent mobile robots to transport epidemic
prevention materials during the epidemic has also reduced the spread of the virus [3].

© 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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DOI: 10.54254/2755-2721/9/20230055

Robot navigation technology is an important technical means for intelligent mobile robots to achieve
autonomous control and autonomous movement to specific targets in an obstacle environment. In indoor
travel, when encountering obstacles obstruction, mobile robots need to detect the surrounding
environment and their own state through sensors, carry out mapping and path planning, and find an
optimal path. The team of the Robot Industry Technology Research Institute of Anhui Polytechnic
University in China broke through the common key technology of multi-axis motion control and
scheduling system of mobile robots, and innovatively developed an all-terrain mobile robot with high-
precision combined navigation with terrain matching and its operation scheduling system, which
realized the autonomous operation of mobile robots in complex situations [4]. Developed countries in
robotics represented by the United States, Japan and other countries have carried out in-depth research
on robot autonomous navigation technology, and have achieved some results.
The related technologies of robot navigation include mapping and positioning technology, and path
planning technology. Among them, mapping and positioning technology includes visual mapping and
positioning technology, lidar mapping and positioning technology, sensor fusion mapping and
positioning technology, etc. This paper reviews the research status of mobile robot navigation
technology from the above three technologies, and further discusses the application prospects and future
development trends of mobile robot navigation [5].

2. Related technologies

2.1. Mapping and positioning

Mapping and positioning is the most important aspect of robot navigation, which determines whether
the robot can navigate successfully or not. In order to achieve autonomous navigation of an intelligent
mobile robot, it is necessary to recognize a variety of environmental information based on multiple
sensors: road boundaries, terrain features, obstacles, guides, etc. In driverless car navigation, it is also
necessary to recognize traffic signs, typical intersections, and other information. The robot uses
environment awareness to determine the reachable and unreachable areas in the forward direction, to
determine its relative position in the environment, and to anticipate dynamic obstacle movements, thus
providing a basis for local path planning [6].

2.1.1. Visual mapping and positioning. Vision navigation, vision refers to computer vision, computer
vision has a rich amount of information, high intelligence, and a variety of advantages, so it has been
widely used in recent years in the autonomous navigation of mobile robots, computer navigation
technology is the key to complete road sign detection and recognition, obstacles [7]. The knowledge of
an autonomous robotic navigation environment is defined in certain early vision systems by a grid in
which items in three-dimensional space are projected vertically by volume onto a two-dimensional
horizontal plane enabling analysis and exploration of locations concealed from reality. The "Occupancy
Map" is another name for this depiction. The Occupancy Map concept was later refined by "Virtual
Force Fields" (VFF). The VFF is similar to a "Occupancy Map," except that on the map, each occupied
area imposes a repulsive force on the robot, whereas the destination exerts a gravitational force on it.
All of these forces interact with one another via vector addition and subtraction to draw the robot away
from obstacles and toward the target [8].
The key to map-based navigation is the autonomous robot's localization, and vision-based
localization can be separated into four parts.
Obtain sensory information: acquires or digitizes the perceptron, which is the picture acquired by the
camera in vision-based autonomous robots.
Detect landmarks: This step is generally a digital image processing process. That is, operations such
as edge extraction, image smoothing, filtering, region segmentation, etc. are performed on the basis of
different types of images, such as grayscale images, color images, and motion vectors.

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DOI: 10.54254/2755-2721/9/20230055

Establish matches between observation and expectation: In this stage, the autonomous robot uses the
seen landmarks, which were processed in step 2), to try to match them in the database using some
judgment criteria.
Compute position: If the match in step 3) is successful, the autonomous robot must determine its
absolute location in the whole navigation space using the exact position of the landmark in the database
and the robot's own position relative to the surface.

2.1.2. Lidar mapping and positioning. LIDAR is widely used in robot collision avoidance and
environment modelling, because of its long detection distance (tens of meters, even hundreds of meters),
high measurement accuracy, and the ability to perform line scan and surface scan. Line scan LIDAR
can only obtain a two-dimensional model of the environment, while surface scan LIDAR can obtain a
three-dimensional model of the environment [9].
The robot uses sensors (e.g., LiDAR) in an unknown environment to collect depth-of-field data with
itself as the origin, a process in which the robot achieves localization (its own pose) and initialization of
the global map. The SLAM algorithm generates a new local map and extracts the feature information
from the acquired data to match the existing features while the robot is in motion, thus estimating the
new pose of the robot. The updated poses allow incremental incorporation of the local map into the
global map.

2.1.3. Sensor fusion mapping and positioning (vision+radar). Multi-sensor information fusion is one
of the key technologies for mobile robots. Information fusion refers to the integration and processing of
environmental information provided by multiple sensors to form a unified representation of the external
environment. It not only fuses the complementary information, but also eliminates the redundancy of
information, realizes the real-time information and low cost of information, and also can effectively use
the multi-sensor based on a more complete and comprehensive depiction and recognition of the
measured target, and then make the correct judgment and choice, ensuring the rapidity, accuracy and
robustness of robot navigation.
Internal sensors and exterior sensors are the two types of sensors utilized in mobile robots. Internal
sensors are utilized to detect the robot system's internal characteristics. Odometers, gyroscopes,
magnetic compasses, and optical encoders are among the most common. External sensors are utilized
to get information about the environment. Vision sensors, laser range sensors, ultrasonic sensors,
infrared sensors, and other types are the most common. Weighted averaging, Bayesian estimation, multi-
Bayesian methods, Kalman filtering, D-S evidence inference, fuzzy logic, generative rules, artificial
neural networks, and other techniques are extensively employed for multi-sensor information fusion
techniques. The weighted average method is an underlying data fusion method that uses a weighted
average of redundant data from multiple sensors to produce an estimate that is not statistically optimal.
The Bayesian approach is to make probabilistic judgments about events that have not occurred based on
known facts, and to make inferences about unknown probabilities from known prior probabilities. D-S
evidence inference is an extension of the Bayesian approach, which uses an unstable interval. The prior
probability of unknown premises can compensate for the inadequacies of the Bayesian technique. It is
especially well suited to dealing with information fusion issues in multi-sensor integrated systems.
Using the statistical attributes of the measurement model, Kalman filtering is used to iteratively identify
the best fused data estimate in a statistical sense [10]. Artificial neural nets can fuse the information
from sensors by certain learning algorithms to obtain the network parameters.

2.2. Path planning

Path planning is an important part and topic of navigation research. The main problems involved in path
planning include. 1) Using the infrmation gathered about the mobile robot's surroundings to construct a
more realistic model, and then applying some algorithm to discover a collision-free path in the
environment space that takes the least time from the beginning state to the destination state; 2) being
able to deal with the uncertainties in the environment model and the errors that occur in path tracking,

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DOI: 10.54254/2755-2721/9/20230055

so that the influence of the outside world on the robot is minimized; 3) using the known information to
guide the robot's actions, so as to obtain a relatively better behavioral strategies. There are two forms of
path planning dependent on the type of information the robot acquires about the environment: global
path planning based on a priori information about the environment and local path planning based on
sensor input. The former seeks an ideal path based on past environmental knowledge, whereas the latter
is unknown or largely unknown, such as when the field environment changes dramatically or unexpected
obstacles appear, and the acquired information is insufficient to support the robot's navigation.
Information about the size, shape, and location of obstacles must be obtained from the surrounding
environment by relying on on-board sensors and reprogrammed online to compute a collision-free path
in real time. The following global path planning methods are often used: free-space method, visual graph
method, raster method, topology method, etc. In sensor-based local path planning in partially known or
unknown situations, the artificial potential field approach, fuzzy logic algorithm, genetic algorithm, and
artificial neural network are commonly applied [7]. In recent years, the simulated annealing algorithm,
ant colony algorithm, particle swarm algorithm, chaos algorithm, artificial immune algorithm, and
heuristic search technique have gained popularity.

3. Application prospect

3.1. Factory automation

In the high-speed production line, the delay of any station will affect the efficiency of the entire line, so
the production manager must ensure the efficient and stable supply of materials in each production link.
Intelligent mobile robots using robot navigation technology have played a key role in this, and at present,
there are several application scenarios of mobile robots in the workshop. For example, to handle
materials, mobile robots transport materials to designated areas for storage through navigation, or
transport them to the processing place for manual or automatic sorting, and then pull them to the
processing point for standby, the whole process is carried out under monitoring, and the operator can
flexibly adjust and optimize the equipment operation path to achieve higher efficiency [11].

3.2. Supermarket guidelines

Intelligent mobile robots in shopping malls and supermarkets can help customers to consume
conveniently and increase mobile shelves. Through sensor fusion mapping for positioning, the mobile
robot breaks the limitation of traditional shelf position fixed and cannot move, and can move
autonomously for the crowd to increase exposure. And based on offline flow of people can provide user
portraits, including gender, age range, preferences, etc., the support of this data can become an important
basis for production and delivery quantification. At present, intelligent mobile robots have been used in
many fields such as fresh food and supermarkets, which can record the flow of passengers, the number
of people staying and the length of time in the first time, analyze the passenger flow, and provide
personalized product display and recommendation [12]. At the same time, the movement path can be
continuously optimized based on the robot's position information and the passenger flow statistics of the
time series.

4. Conclusion
When the robot goes out of the limited scope and goes to a wider space, navigation becomes a bottleneck
technology that restricts the promotion and application of robots in a larger range, and it is also the key
technology for intelligent mobile robots to truly realize autonomous control [1] At present, the
traditional map representation method is still the most used method for robot mapping. In recent years,
algorithms based on artificial intelligence have been widely used in path planning algorithms. [2] It lays
the groundwork for the rapid use of intelligent mobile robots in a variety of sectors. With the continued
growth and improvement of science and technology, the application possibilities for mobile robots will
be broadened in the future. Mobile robot technology for industrial applications will accelerate the

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integration with artificial intelligence, mobile Internet, big data processing and other technologies to
create new technologies, products and application models.

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