%0 Journal Article
%T Mobile Robot Exploration by Using Environmental Boundary Information
%A Theeraphol Wattanavekin
%A Taiki Ogata
%A Tatsunori Hara
%A Jun Ota
%J ISRN Robotics
%D 2013
%R 10.5402/2013/954610
%X We present the method of exploration using environmental boundary information for an indoor map generation problem of a mobile robot. We introduce an exploration method by (i) integration of the exploration method with Reaction-Diffusion Equation on a Graph (RDEG) and connected components labeling and (ii) a replanning framework in updating exploration plan for the currently obtained sensor information. Our approach has been implemented in simulation environments and has been compared with two existing methods: frontier-based exploration method and zig-zag method. The results demonstrate the efficiency of our approach over others. Lastly, the approach was implemented and tested on an actual robot, demonstrating its efficiency in a real-world situation. 1. Introduction Currently, an autonomous mobile robot needs to possess three important properties. They are the ability to efficiently explore an environment, to develop a map of the environment, and to automatically self-localize on the map. An exploration plan is the guideline for the robot to identify the location of obstacles, objects, and free spaces effectively by sensing the environment. Robot tasks, such as searching, require time and energy and, thus, an effective exploration plan is required for a robot to complete the task in a fast and energy-efficient manner. Without an efficient exploration plan, the robot might move inefficiently, wasting time and energy in unproductive searching. Exploration is a basis for many other applications. One important application is mapping an unknown area to create a representation of the environment to be explored. Many successful robot systems rely on maps. The mapping problem is constantly interleaved with decision making involving the next move. A robot moving along the points to observe an environment area in a minimum amount of time is already an NP-hard problem [1¨C3]. In an actual environment, robots often encounter unanticipated obstacles that make it difficult to complete a task. To deal with such situations, robots replan exploration paths to avoid obstacles while acquiring a wide and effective sensing range in an unexplored area. In addition, replanning happens several times, since unknown obstacles are frequently encountered in real environments. Therefore, a good exploration plan also includes a good replanning algorithm that must be simple, effective, and computationally efficient. Here, what we need to consider is that, in many cases, we have the information of environmental boundary in advance, such as cleaning or patrolling tasks. For example,
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.robotics/2013/954610/