Patent ID: 7873447

Claim:
A position estimation apparatus for a mobile object, said position estimation apparatus comprising: a position prediction unit configured to drive a position prediction filter to carry out a filtering process on a sensor value generated by an odometry sensor mounted on said mobile object as a sensor value for the present frame and a result of estimating the position of said mobile object for a previous frame in order to produce a position prediction as a prediction of said position of said mobile object for the present frame; an environment observation unit configured to measure the environment of said mobile object by making use of an environment observation sensor other than said odometry sensor used by said position prediction unit and observing positions of feature points in said environment by keeping track of said feature points from frame to frame; a prediction-error check unit configured to produce a result of determination as to whether a position prediction produced by said position prediction unit as a prediction of the position of said mobile object is correct or incorrect on the basis of a result generated by said environment observation unit as a result of an operation to keep track of said feature points in said environment; a position prediction correction unit configured to correct a position prediction produced by said position prediction unit as a prediction of the position of said mobile object if said prediction-error check unit produces a determination result indicating that said position prediction is incorrect; and a position/posture updating unit configured to update the position and/or posture of said mobile object if said prediction-error check unit produces a determination result indicating that a position prediction produced by said position prediction unit as a prediction of the position of said mobile object is correct.