Localization, Exploration, and Navigation Based on Qualitative Angle Information

Three of the major problems in qualitative spatial reasoning and robotics are localization, exploration, and navigation in known or unknown environments. This paper investigates how far different qualitative methods based on angle information, most of them originally invented for the representation of spatial knowledge only, are well-suited for these tasks. It turns out that with panoramas, which are special roundviews, the qualitative localization problem can be solved in a satisfiable manner. It is stated that the exploration problem, i.e. qualitative map building, remains difficult for all approaches. In addition, qualitative navigation operators for robot control are discussed.