An automatic switching approach of robotic components for improving robot localization reliability in complicated environment

Purpose – Robot localization technology has been widely studied for decades and a lot of remarkable approaches have been developed. However, in practice, this technology has hardly been applied to common day-to-day deployment scenarios. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach that focuses on improving the localization robustness in complicated environment. Design/methodology/approach – The localization robustness is improved by dynamically switching the localization components (such as the environmental camera, the laser range finder and the depth camera). As the components are highly heterogeneous, they are developed under the robotic technology component (RTC) framework. This simplifies the developing process by increasing the potential for reusability and future expansion. To realize this switching, the localization reliability for each component is modeled, and a configuration method for dynamically selecting dependable components at run-time is presented. Findings – The experimental results show that this approach significantly decreases robot lost situation in the complicated environment. The robustness is further enhanced through the cooperation of heterogeneous localization components. Originality/value – A multi-component automatic switching approach for robot localization system is developed and described in this paper. The reliability of this system is proved to be a substantial improvement over single-component localization techniques.