Landmark-Based Navigation for a Mobile Robot

In this paper we present a landmark based navigation mechanism for a mobile robot. The system uses a self-organising mechanism to map the environment as the robot is led around that environment by an operator. Detected landmarks, and their relative position towards each other, are recorded in a map that can subsequently be used to plan and execute paths from the robot's current location to a `goal' location speciied by the user. The main motivation for the research described in this paper is to develop a mobile robot navigation system that is robust (through the use of perceptual landmarks), and allows the robot to plan arbitrary paths within its known environment. The system presented here achieves these objectives.