C. Stachniss, W. Burgard

Exploring Unknown Environments with Mobile Robots using Coverage Maps

In Proc. of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence(IJCAI), 2003.






Abstract

In this paper we introduce coverage maps as a new way of representing the environment of a mobile robot. Coverage maps store for each cell of a given grid a posterior about the amount the corresponding cell is covered by an obstacle. Using this representation a mobile robot can more accurately reason about its uncertainty in the map of the environment than with standard occupancy grids. We present a model for proximity sensors designed to update coverage maps upon sensory input. We also describe how coverage maps can be used to formulate a decision-theoretic approach for mobile robot exploration. We present experiments carried out with real robots in which accurate maps are build from noisy ultrasound data. Finally, we present a comparison of different view-point selection strategies for mobile robot exploration.

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Bibtex


Bibtex:

@InProceedings{stachniss03ijcai,
  author    = {Stachniss, C. and Burgard, W.},
  title     = {Exploring Unknown Environments with Mobile Robots using Coverage Maps},
  booktitle = {Proc. of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)},
  year      = {2003},
}