Cooperative 3D mapping and Localisation of Multiple Mobile Robots

Developing a coherent and unified approach to localisation and mapping is one of the prerequisites for fully establishing the mobile robotics era in the 21st century. Therefore, this research attempts to address this simultaneous localisation and mapping problem (SLAM) for both a single robot and cooperating multiple robots equipped with 3D range sensors. To begin with various methods and hardware set-ups for allowing robots to reli-ably detect each other are explored and tested. Once robots have detected others the question of how their relative pose can be determined most accurately is investigated, especially in the case when two corresponding robots detect each other simultaneously. This situation, referred to as mutual localisation, results in reliable and accurate rela-tive pose determination. The second aspect of this work develops hardware mechanisms for mobile robots to obtain 3D information about the environment around them. For robots to rapidly acquire 3D information of their surrounding spatial structure a conventional 2D lase