Vision-based motion planning and exploration algorithms for mobile robots

This paper considers the problem of systematically exploring an unfamiliar environment in search of one or more recognizable targets. The proposed exploration algorithm is based on a novel representation of environments containing visual landmarks, called the boundary place graph. This representation records the set of recognizable objects (landmarks) that are visible from the boundary of each configuration space obstacle. The exploration algorithm constructs the boundary place graph incrementally from sensor data. Once the robot has completely explored an environment, it can use the constructed representation to carry out further navigation tasks. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which the algorithm is guaranteed to discover all landmarks. This algorithm has been implemented on our mobile robot platform RJ, and results from these experiments are presented.