A navigation scheme for autonomous mobile service robots working in GPS denied commercial indoor spaces

Autonomous mobile service robots assist humans in retail, logistics, hospitality, and healthcare, especially for laborious, mundane, and hazardous tasks. In indoor environments, such robots need to navigate effectively to different locations without the availability of a GPS signal. This paper presents a navigation scheme for a mobile robot that includes odometry and a go-to-goal controller. The odometry precisely gauges the bearing angle and distance travelled by the mobile robot. The go-to-goal controller assists the mobile robot in navigating towards the set target point with minimal error. The effectiveness of the presented navigation system is implemented and tested on a differential steering mobile robot. The results confirm the reliable performance of the presented method in all four quadrants with an error of less than one centimeter in each quadrant.