Chemnitz, Techn. Univ., Diplomarb., 2009.

Zugl.: Ilmenau, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2009

Zugl.: Zürich, Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2009

Zugl.: Stuttgart, Univ., Diss., 2007

Zugl.: Bremen, Univ., Diss., 2006 / Lizenzpflichtig

Zugl.: Ilmenau, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2009

Die dynamische Schätzung der Fahrzeugposition durch Sensordatenfusion ist eine der grundlegenden Aufgaben für moderne Verkehrsanwendungen wie zum Beispiel fahrerlose Transportsysteme oder Pre-Crash-Sicherheitssysteme. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Verfahren zur dezentralen kooperativen Fahrzeuglokalisierung vorgestellt, das auf einer allgemeinen Methode zur Fusion von Informationen mehrerer Teilnehmer beruht. Sowohl die lokale als auch die übertragene Schätzung wird durch Partikel dargestellt. Innerhalb einer Simulation wird gezeigt, dass sich die Positionsschätzung der einzelnen Teilnehmer im Netzwerk im Vergleich zu einer reinen GPS-basierten Lösung verbessert.

Die dynamische Schätzung der Fahrzeugposition durch Sensordatenfusion ist eine der grundlegenden Aufgaben für moderne Verkehrsanwendungen wie zum Beispiel fahrerlose Transportsysteme oder Pre-Crash-Sicherheitssysteme. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Verfahren zur dezentralen kooperativen Fahrzeuglokalisierung vorgestellt, das auf einer allgemeinen Methode zur Fusion von Informationen mehrerer Teilnehmer beruht. Sowohl die lokale als auch die übertragene Schätzung wird durch Partikel dargestellt. Innerhalb einer Simulation wird gezeigt, dass sich die Positionsschätzung der einzelnen Teilnehmer im Netzwerk im Vergleich zu einer reinen GPS-basierten Lösung verbessert.

This thesis offers a probabilistic solution to robust estimation using a novel adaptive estimator. Reliable state estimation is a mandatory prerequisite for autonomous systems interacting with the real world. The presence of outliers challenges the Gaussian assumption of numerous estimation algorithms, resulting in a potentially skewed estimate that compromises reliability. Many approaches attempt to mitigate erroneous measurements by using a robust loss function – which often comes with a trade-off between robustness and numerical stability. The proposed approach is purely probabilistic and enables adaptive large-scale estimation with non-Gaussian error models. The introduced Adaptive Mixture algorithm combines a nonlinear least squares backend with Gaussian mixtures as the measurement error model. Factor graphs as graphical representations allow an efficient and flexible application to real-world problems, such as simultaneous localization and mapping or satellite navigation. The proposed algorithms are constructed using an approximate expectation-maximization approach, which justifies their design probabilistically. This expectation-maximization is further generalized to enable adaptive estimation with arbitrary probabilistic models. Evaluating the proposed Adaptive Mixture algorithm in simulated and real-world scenarios demonstrates its versatility and robustness. A synthetic range-based localization shows that it provides reliable estimation results, even under extreme outlier ratios. Real-world satellite navigation experiments prove its robustness in harsh urban environments. The evaluation on indoor simultaneous localization and mapping datasets extends these results to typical robotic use cases. The proposed adaptive estimator provides robust and reliable estimation under various instances of non-Gaussian measurement errors.

SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) has been a very active and almost ubiquitous problem in the field of mobile and autonomous robotics for over two decades. For many years, filter-based methods have dominated the SLAM literature, but a change of paradigms could be observed recently. Current state of the art solutions of the SLAM problem are based on efficient sparse least squares optimization techniques. However, it is commonly known that least squares methods are by default not robust against outliers. In SLAM, such outliers arise mostly from data association errors like false positive loop closures. Since the optimizers in current SLAM systems are not robust against outliers, they have to rely heavily on certain preprocessing steps to prevent or reject all data association errors. Especially false positive loop closures will lead to catastrophically wrong solutions with current solvers. The problem is commonly accepted in the literature, but no concise solution has been proposed so far. The main focus of this work is to develop a novel formulation of the optimization-based SLAM problem that is robust against such outliers. The developed approach allows the back-end part of the SLAM system to change parts of the topological structure of the problem\'s factor graph representation during the optimization process. The back-end can thereby discard individual constraints and converge towards correct solutions even in the presence of many false positive loop closures. This largely increases the overall robustness of the SLAM system and closes a gap between the sensor-driven front-end and the back-end optimizers. The approach is evaluated on both large scale synthetic and real-world datasets. This work furthermore shows that the developed approach is versatile and can be applied beyond SLAM, in other domains where least squares optimization problems are solved and outliers have to be expected. This is successfully demonstrated in the domain of GPS-based vehicle localization in urban areas where multipath satellite observations often impede high-precision position estimates.