[Submitted on 15 Oct 2026]
Title:Micro-Localization: High-Precision Mobile Robot Localization Using Microscopic Ground Texture
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Abstract:We demonstrate high-precision global localization using natural ground texture viewed through microscope optics, achieving localization in the tens-of-micrometers regime. For the planar ground texture localization problem considered here, we relate optical magnification and image-space localization uncertainty to physical localization precision. Leveraging this relationship, we then develop a microscope-based localization system that addresses the calibration, camera-modeling, and focus challenges introduced by high-magnification imaging. We evaluate this system across several surface textures using a calibrated precision gantry. Across 1,007 held-out queries per surface, the system localizes every query and achieves translation RMSEs of 28$-$73 $\mu$m. Independent photometric registration agrees with the feature-based localization estimates to within approximately 9 $\mu$m RMSE. We further demonstrate localization on a low-cost mobile robot using the gantry-collected maps, and also show that the system can resolve micrometer-scale displacement caused by thermal expansion. These results show that microscopic natural surface texture can bring mobile localization into a precision regime typically associated with fixed positioning systems.
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO); Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
Cite as: arXiv:2610.22563 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2610.22563v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.22563
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Aaron Wilhelm [view email] [v1] Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:04:52 UTC (4,641 KB)
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