Relocalization
Check whether the robot's pose can be trusted, and recover it from the dock.
Navigation is only as good as the robot's belief about where it is. When that belief drifts — or is lost outright after a restart — the robot needs to relocalize: re-establish a trustworthy pose in the map before it moves again.
In the portal
In the Machine Teleops Map view, the Localize tool fixes the pose by hand — reach for it when the robot has drifted or comes up unsure of where it is. Click Localize (estimate pose), then set the robot's position and heading on the map.
Over the API, two endpoints cover it: one to check the pose, one to fix it from the dock.
Checking the pose
This reports whether the current pose estimate can be trusted. On the 2D stack, the navigation stack's AMCL variance (/api/amcl_variance on :5001) is the finer-grained signal; on the 3D stack, the pose comes from ICP matching against the point cloud.
Re-seeding from the dock
The charging station is the one pose the robot knows without estimating it — the saved charger location is a fact, not a guess. So relocalization re-seeds the pose from the dock:
This is only valid while the robot is charging — that's what makes the dock pose reliable. It's also the 3D stack's only relocalization channel: unlike 2D AMCL, 3D ICP localization can't recover on its own, so a robot whose 3D pose has drifted is brought back by docking and re-seeding.
This is why deploying a patrol sends the robot home before restarting navigation — the restart discards the pose estimate, and the dock is where it's re-established. In the portal you'll see this as the "Seeding localization from the charging station" step of a deploy.
Parameters
POST /localization/reseed
map_name
string
no
Map whose charger pose to seed from; defaults to the active map
map_dir
string
no
Explicit map directory, if you're not using the active map
If something goes wrong
400"must be on the charging station" — the robot isn't charging. Dock it first (Auto Charging), then re-seed.400on seed — the charger pose couldn't be resolved for the map; confirm a charger location is saved.
For system endpoints like GET /status and base control, see the Autonomy API Overview.
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