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Main Authors: Fernandez, Gabriel I., Hou, Ruochen, Xu, Alex, Togashi, Colin, Hong, Dennis W.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08495
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author Fernandez, Gabriel I.
Hou, Ruochen
Xu, Alex
Togashi, Colin
Hong, Dennis W.
author_facet Fernandez, Gabriel I.
Hou, Ruochen
Xu, Alex
Togashi, Colin
Hong, Dennis W.
contents In this paper, we present our localization method called CLAP, Clustering to Localize Across $n$ Possibilities, which helped us win the RoboCup 2024 adult-sized autonomous humanoid soccer competition. Competition rules limited our sensor suite to stereo vision and an inertial sensor, similar to humans. In addition, our robot had to deal with varying lighting conditions, dynamic feature occlusions, noise from high-impact stepping, and mistaken features from bystanders and neighboring fields. Therefore, we needed an accurate, and most importantly robust localization algorithm that would be the foundation for our path-planning and game-strategy algorithms. CLAP achieves these requirements by clustering estimated states of our robot from pairs of field features to localize its global position and orientation. Correct state estimates naturally cluster together, while incorrect estimates spread apart, making CLAP resilient to noise and incorrect inputs. CLAP is paired with a particle filter and an extended Kalman filter to improve consistency and smoothness. Tests of CLAP with other landmark-based localization methods showed similar accuracy. However, tests with increased false positive feature detection showed that CLAP outperformed other methods in terms of robustness with very little divergence and velocity jumps. Our localization performed well in competition, allowing our robot to shoot faraway goals and narrowly defend our goal.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_08495
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CLAP: Clustering to Localize Across n Possibilities, A Simple, Robust Geometric Approach in the Presence of Symmetries
Fernandez, Gabriel I.
Hou, Ruochen
Xu, Alex
Togashi, Colin
Hong, Dennis W.
Robotics
In this paper, we present our localization method called CLAP, Clustering to Localize Across $n$ Possibilities, which helped us win the RoboCup 2024 adult-sized autonomous humanoid soccer competition. Competition rules limited our sensor suite to stereo vision and an inertial sensor, similar to humans. In addition, our robot had to deal with varying lighting conditions, dynamic feature occlusions, noise from high-impact stepping, and mistaken features from bystanders and neighboring fields. Therefore, we needed an accurate, and most importantly robust localization algorithm that would be the foundation for our path-planning and game-strategy algorithms. CLAP achieves these requirements by clustering estimated states of our robot from pairs of field features to localize its global position and orientation. Correct state estimates naturally cluster together, while incorrect estimates spread apart, making CLAP resilient to noise and incorrect inputs. CLAP is paired with a particle filter and an extended Kalman filter to improve consistency and smoothness. Tests of CLAP with other landmark-based localization methods showed similar accuracy. However, tests with increased false positive feature detection showed that CLAP outperformed other methods in terms of robustness with very little divergence and velocity jumps. Our localization performed well in competition, allowing our robot to shoot faraway goals and narrowly defend our goal.
title CLAP: Clustering to Localize Across n Possibilities, A Simple, Robust Geometric Approach in the Presence of Symmetries
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08495