EXPLORATION OF A MOBILE ROBOT BASED ON SONAR PROBABILITY MAPPING

This paper suggests a new exploration strategy of an autonomous mobile robot in an unknown environment. Determination of a temporary goal ba sed on a representation of work area named exploration quadtree is pro posed. The exploration quadtree provides the information on quality of the regions concerned in a robot's workspace. Using this quadtree the robot easily finds the next temporary goal that makes exploration mov e efficient. The quadtree is made up from a sonar probability map that is constructed by sonar range sensing and Bayesian probability theory . We then propose a method that plans a path between the determined te mporary goals based on a probability map. The developed methods were i mplemented on a real mobile robot, AMROYS-II, which was built in our l aboratory, and shown to be useful enough in a real environment that ca rt be projected onto a two-dimensional space.