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Topologically-directed navigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

David Rawlinson  and
Ray Jarvis
David Rawlinson*
Affiliation:
Intelligent Robotics Research Centre, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Ray Jarvis
Affiliation:
Intelligent Robotics Research Centre, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: david.rawlinson@eng.monash.edu.au
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Summary

Recent advances in simultaneous localization and mapping permit robots to autonomously explore enclosed environments and, subsequently, navigate to selected positions within them. But, for many tasks, it is more useful to immediately navigate to goals in unexplored environments, without a map. This is possible if a human director can describe the ideal route to the robot using grounded symbols that both parties can perceive directly.

In this paper, a mobile robot is autonomously navigated to many locations in a cluttered laboratory environment by a variety of routes. A series of topological navigation instructions are provided in advance by the director, in a form that can be expressed verbally and translates easily to software representation. The instructions are based on the perception of spatial affordances available to the robot, namely nearby junctions and edges in a pruned Generalized Voronoi Diagram. The operator can generate the instructions by viewing or imagining the environment without any measurements. Only three to five instructions are needed to navigate anywhere in our laboratory. The instructions contain only topology. No spatial measurements or environmental data such as landmarks are provided to the robot.

Keywords

Goal-directedNavigationTopologicalExploration
Type
Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , March 2008 , pp. 189 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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