Detection and tracking of 2D geometric obstacles from LRF data

This work proposes a method for detection and tracking of local geometrical obstacles from sequences of two-dimensional range scans. Detected obstacles are represented with linear or circular models. Circular obstacles are subject to tracking algorithm based on Kalman filter. Solutions to both the correspondence and the update problem of the tracking system are provided. The occurence of obstacles fusion or fission is defined and addressed. A by-product of the system is the information on tracked obstacles velocity. The algorithm is dedicated to wheeled mobile robots with mounted planar laser range finders.