2013 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Retrieving Topological Information for Mobile Robots Provided with Grid Maps
Authors : David Portugal, Rui P. Rocha
Published in: Agents and Artificial Intelligence
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.
Select sections of text to find matching patents with Artificial Intelligence. powered by
Select sections of text to find additional relevant content using AI-assisted search. powered by
In the context of mobile robotics, it is crucial for the robot to have a consistent representation of the surrounding area. However, common grid maps used in robotics do not provide any evidence as to connectivity, making it harder to find appropriate paths to particular points on the site. Therefore, abstracting the environment where mobile robots carry out some mission can be of a great benefit.
Topological maps have been increasingly used in robotics, because they are fairly simple and an extremely intuitive representation for tasks that involve path planning. In this article, a method for retrieving a topological map from an
a priori
generic grid map of the environment is presented. Beyond extracting a 2D diagram which portrays the topology of the infra-structure, the focus is placed on obtaining graph-like data related to the connectivity of important points in the area, that can be passed on to robots or to a centralized planner, in order to assist the navigation task. The proposed method is further elaborated in detail and its results prove the simplicity, accuracy and efficiency of the approach.