Retrieving Topological Information for Mobile Robots Provided with Grid Maps

D. Portugal and R. P. Rocha

Joaquim Filipe and Ana Fred (editors), Agents and Artificial Intelligence, Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) series, vol. 358, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-642-36906-3, pp. 204–217, 2013.

Abstract

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. Keywords: Robot Navigation, Graphs, Topological Maps, Voronoi Diagrams.

Index Terms — Robot navigation, graphs, topological maps, Voronoi diagrams.

Full text

You may ask Rui Rocha for an electronic copy of this publication’s full text by e-mail:
.

Please select for your message’s subject ‘Requesting Rui Rocha’s electronic copy’ and include on the message’s body your full name, title and affiliation, why do you need to access the publication and the BibTeX information below.

BibTeX

@INCOLLECTION(Portugal_et_al_13a,

AUTHOR = "Portugal, D. and Rocha, R. P.",

TITLE = "Retrieving Topological Information for Mobile Robots Provided with Grid Maps",

BOOKTITLE = "Agents and Artificial Intelligence, Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) series",

PUBLISHER = "Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg",

YEAR = "2013",

EDITOR = "Filipe, Joaquim and Fred, Ana",

PAGES = "204-217"

)

(top of the page)

Last update: 26/07/2013