Guaranteed 3-D mobile robot localization using an odometer, an automatic theodolite and indistinguishable landmarks

This paper deals with the determination of the full 3-D position and spatial orientation of a mobile robot from sir azimuth and elevation angle measurements provided by in automatic theodolite, Stochastic approaches have already proved to be interesting for navigation algorithms. but they require a reliable initial estimation of the vehicle posture. Computing this initial posture. without any a priori knowledge is not a straightforward mathematical exercise. especially if the landmarks are indistinguishable. In this paper, interval analysis is used to design a robust solution to this issue.