Visual topological mapping and navigation for mobile robot in large-scale environment

Autonomous navigation is a basic prerequisite for mobile robot to realize environmental exploration. Current navigation methods are mainly based on metric maps, which require precise geometric coordinates and lack the capability to efficiently store semantic information of the environment. In this paper, we present a visual topological mapping and navigation method for mobile robot in large-scale environment, which is similar to the human navigation system. Topological map represents the environment as a topology diagram with nodes and edges in which the topological nodes record local semantic information of the environment, such as visual features, robot pose and scene properties. In the topological navigation stage, an image-based Monte Carlo localization is proposed to estimate the semantic pose of robot which can help robot judge whether it has reached the target location more flexibility. Experiments are conducted in real world environments and results indicate that the proposed system exhibits great performance in robustness of navigation.