Robot Topological Map Generation from Formal Route Instructions

1 Mobile robots and Humanoids need to use spatial information about their surrounding environment in order to effectively plan and execute navigation tasks. This spatial information can be presented in various ways to increase the interaction between the human and the robot. One of the more effective ways is by describing the route verbally which bridges the gap between the forms of spatial knowledge of such robots and the forms of language used by humans. In this paper, we build a topological map for robot route description. This map represents the route’s motion actions and spatial relationships graphically to plan robot’s navigation task. The map is generated by using Formal Route Instructions (FRIs) to simplify the route description process and also to avoid ambiguity. FRIs are designed to be simple, easy to use, and suitable for naïve users.