This project focuses on the navigation and path estimation of a 2D planar robot (tank- threaded robot), in 3D space. The project refers to the classical dead reckoning problem, where there is no accurate information available about the position of the robot and the robot is not equipped with a GPS sensor, the only provided information is the change in position and orientation over time (Odometry , which is not robust against drifting), and a more accurate orientation of the robot provided by IMU device. The aim here, is to use those data coming from the Odometry and IMU devices to design an extended kalman filter in order to estimate the position and the orientation of the robot. The position of the 2D planar robot has been assumed to be 3D, then the kalman filter can also estimate the robot path when the surface is not totally flat. One may also use the linear acceleration and angular velocity provided by IMU, but in this project they are skipped because of the high noise and the sudden changes in the information caused by a bumpy road or other elements.

Requirements

• Python > 2.7
  
• RosBag (sudo apt-get install python-rosbag)
  
• NumPy
  
• MatplotLib
  

Set the definitions in main.py file, then run 'python main.py'