Range-only sensors can be used for various location-based services in an indoor or outdoor environment. However, the range-only mapping is a challenging issue because of the property of a range-only sensor. A range-only sensor only measures range information without bearing information. Consequently, the position of a range-only sensor is ambiguous, and the feature initialization is a problem for range-only mapping. In this paper, the feature initialization method for range-only mapping is proposed. This method uses the region of constant depth (RCD) model to estimate the position of a range-only sensor by combining range measurements from different positions. Using the RCD model, the proposed method estimates hypotheses of the position of a range-only sensor. In addition, the proposed method also estimates the uncertainty of the position of a range-only sensor by modeling measurement errors of a range-only sensor appropriately. Using the proposed method, the feature of a range-only sensor can be appropriately initialized and the initialized feature on a map can be updated by adding more measurements using various range-only mapping methods.

Keywords: location-based service, range-only mapping