Mobile Robot Navigation and Control: A Case Study
Robotic systems (and in particular mobile autonomous agents) embody a complex interaction of computational processes, mechanical systems, sensors, and communications hardware. System integration can present significant difficulties to the construction of a real system, because the hardware is often built around convenience of design rather than convenience of system integration. Nonetheless, in order for robots to perform real-world tasks such as navigation, localization and exploration, the different subsystems of motion, sensing and computation must be merged into a single, realisable unit. Our group is investigating particular problems in the domain of computational perception, in the context of mobile robotics. In particular, we are concerned with environment exploration, position estimation, and map construction. We have several mobile platforms integrating different sensing modalities, which we are able to control simultaneously from a single source.