In this paper a new PCA-based positioning sensor and localization system for mobile robots to operate in unstructured environments (e.g. industry, services, domestic. . . ) is proposed and experimentally validated. The inexpensive positioning system resorts to principal component analysis (PCA) of images acquired by a video camera installed onboard, looking upwards to the ceiling. This solution has the advantage of avoiding the need of selecting and extracting features. The principal components of the acquired images are compared with previously registered images, stored in a reduced onboard image database, and the position measured is fused with odometry data. The optimal estimates of position and slippage are provided by Kalman filters, with global stable error dynamics. The experimental validation reported in this work focuses on the results of a set of experiments carried out in a real environment, where the robot travels along a lawn-mower trajectory. A small position error estimate with bounded co-variance was always observed, for arbitrarily long experiments, and slippage was estimated accurately in real time.

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Sensors networks with some intelligence have been proposed for supporting mobile robot navigation systems in indoor environments. However, a standard method of communication among the sensor networks and the mobile robots still doesn't exist and the introduction of new robots in a certain environment can be a difficult task.In this paper, we present a practical example that uses the emerging standard Web Services technology for communication and seamless integration of mobile robots and intelligent sensor networks, which is used for robot localization purposes.