Evaluation of two-dimensional angular orientation of a mobile robot by a modified algorithm based on Hough Transform

Abstract

This paper proposes an algorithm that assesses the angular orientation of a mobile robot with respect to its referential position or a map of the surrounding space. In the framework of the suggested method, the orientation problem is converted to evaluating a dimensional rotation of the object that is abstracted as a polygon (or a closed polygonal chain). The method is based on Hough transform, which transforms the measurement space to a parametric space (in this case, a two-dimensional space [θ, r] of straight-line parameters). The Hough transform preserves the angles between the straight lines during rotation, translation, and isotropic scaling transformations. The problem of rotation assessment then becomes a one-dimensional optimization problem. The suggested algorithm inherits the Hough method's robustness to noise.