engleski

Navigation of mobile robots in indoor environments - state of the art and future directions

This paper addresses basic questions concerning posibility of autonomous mobile robot to operate independetly in unknown indoor environments. Navigation is en essential competence for mobile robots, because most of the potential applications require the ability to move purposefully between locations. Hower, in order to operate in unknown environments, a navigating mobile robot is faced with a fundamental dilemma: to explore and build maps of uncharted teritory, the robots needs to know its locations, but in order to know its location, the robot needs a map. The goal of a real-time map building is to update obstacle locations relative to the mobile robot position. The two most common approaches are considered, namely feature-based and grid-based maps. The problems with maintaining high-resolution geometric maps, namely the high computational requirements and the need for accurate position information, have lead many researchers to investigate the use of topological maps. One of the critical components of mapping an unknown environment is the robot's ability to locate itself on a partially explored map. The estimation of position and orientation is done mainly by sensing robot motions and/or by sensing of the environment. Most mobile robots are equipped with wheel encoders to dead-reckoning robot's relative path and orientation. Other sensors (ultrasonic, vision, laser range finder) are needed mostly to recognize the entities sensed in the environment and to compesate for the dead-reconing drift. The robot needs the ability to re-identify locations, especially after becoming lost. In order to overcome the problem of perceptual aliasing, the robot needs to explore the environment. It requires basic sensor-motor competences for avoiding collisions and following planned paths through the environment. This paper gives an overview and disccussion of the state of the art of mobile robot navigation approaches, together with their advantages and disadvantages.

autonomous mobile robots; navigation; localization; map-building; exploration

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