A Robot SLAM Improved by Quantum-Behaved Particles Swarm Optimization

We propose a new SLAM method based on fast simultaneous localization and mapping (FastSLAM). The technique presented uses an improved quantum-behaved particles swarm optimization (QPSO) to improve the proposal distribution of particles and optimize the estimated particles. This method makes the sampled particles closer to the true pose of the robot and improves the estimation accuracy of robot poses and landmarks. In the QPSO algorithm, the Gaussian disturbance is added to increase the diversity of the particles. By using this technique the premature convergence of particles swarm is overcome. In the resample step, the threshold value is used to evaluate the particle diversity. When the particle diversity is below the threshold value, the linear optimization is used to produce new sample particles, which increases the particle diversity and eliminates the loss of diversity. Simulations and experiments show that the proposed approach improves the accuracy of SLAM. The accuracy of estimated poses and landmarks with the proposed method is better than that with the traditional SLAM method.