Symbolic environment representation by means of frescoes in mobile robotics

Autonomous mobile robot navigation systems are based on three principal kinds of techniques: map-based navigation, map-building-based navigation and mapless navigation. We propose a mapless method for trajectory description in unknown indoor environments. The method uses distance measurements from a 2D laser range finder, digitises the robot’s visibility area, eliminates superfluous data and reorients their presentation with laws similar to those used in cellular automata. The landmarks are extracted and organised in a panoramic description called fresco. The frescoes which are validated by means of neighbourhood rules. The most informative frescoes are detected by means of two criteria and stored. The stored frescoes are considered as a human-like descritption of the robot’s route and could be used by the robot to retrieve its route to its starting point.