Vision-based motion planning and exploration algorithms for mobile robots

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Abstract
This paper considers the problem of systematically ex-ploring an unfamiliar environment in search of one or more recognizable targets. The proposed exploration algorithm is based on a novel representation of environments contain-ing visual landmarks called the boundary place graph. This representation records the set of recognizable objects (land-marks) that are visible from the boundary of each con gura-tion space obstacle. No metric information about the scene geometry is recorded nor are explicit prescriptions for mov-ing between places stored. The exploration algorithm con-structs the boundary place graph incrementally from sensor data. Once the robot has completely explored an environ-ment, it can use the constructed representation to carry out further navigation tasks. In order to precisely characterize the set of environments in which this algorithm is expected to succeed, we provide a necessary and su cient condition under which the algorithm is guaranteed to discover all land-marks. This algorithm has been implemented on our mobile robot platform RJ, and results from these experiments are presented. Importantly, this research demonstrates that it is possible to design and implement provably correct explo-ration and navigation algorithms that do not require global positioning systems or metric representations of the envi-ronment. Keywords | exploration, navigation, mobile robots, land-marks

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