Motion Description Language-Based Topological Maps for Robot Navigation

Abstract

Robot navigation over large areas inevitably has to rely on maps of the environment.\nThe standard manner in which such maps are defined is through geometry, e.g. through traversability\ngrid maps or through a division of the environment into free-space and obstacle-space. In this paper,\nwe combine certain aspects of the geometric maps, through the notion of distinctive places, with a\ntopological description of how these places are related. What is novel is the idea that the adjacency\nrelation is defined by the existence of a control law that drives the robot between topologically\nconnected places. Moreover, these maps can be automatically constructed based on the premise that\nthe nodes correspond to places associated with a hightened control activity.