Polarization compass for robot navigation

摘要

Animals often use a combination of path integration and compass information to keep track of their actual position. Path integration, i.e. the continuous updating of distance and direction of the actual position relative to a start position based on intrinsic motion estimates, is easily obtained. However, errors in proprioceptive measuring accumulate. In contrast, the information about the compass direction can provide the heading estimation with a constant small error. In this paper, the performance of the path integration without external reference is compared with the performance using a polarization compass. As proprioceptive estimate, wheel revolutions were used in both cases. The experiments were carried out using a Khepera miniature robot.