Mobile Robot Navigation in Outdoor Environments:
A Topological Approach
Thesis to obtain the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering,
Instituto Superior Técnico, June 2005.
Keywords
Navigation, Mobile Robots, Topological Map,
Probabilistic Robotics, Feature Extraction and Selection, Search
and Rescue, Outdoor Environments |
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Members of Jury
Reitor da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa
(represented by Doutor João de Miranda Lemos) |
Doutor José Neira Parra
Doutor Jorge Manuel Miranda Dias
Doutora Maria Isabel Lobato de Faria Ribeiro
Doutor Mário Alexandre Teles Figueiredo
Doutor Pedro Manuel Urbano de Almeida Lima |
Abstract
The thesis addresses the problem of mobile robot navigation in
outdoor environments and proposes methodologies based on a
topological approach, concerning to three main issues: environment
representation, localization and navigation.
The selected
approach, based on a mathematical support, has to solve the three
main issues simultaneously.
The motivation of the thesis is based on some cutting edges of the
nature, where are millions of species with fantastic navigation
capabilities, that retrieve the essential for life.
For this purpose, complete algorithms were developed and tested in
realistic scenarios with a real mobile robot. The main
contributions of the thesis are the environment representation (a
new topological representation, a set of notes defined by sum of
Gaussians, connected by orientation), map building (a dynamic
version of expectation and maximization algorithm), a
probabilistic approach for localization and navigation (an
optimized version of Forward-Backward algorithm) and feature
extraction and selection (different types of feature extraction
procedures with a selection criteria).
The thesis concludes in a chapter describing the experimental
results acquired by a real mobile robot, showing that the
developed algorithms achieve the main goals proposed by a
topological approach and a high level of abstraction.
The main contribution provided in the thesis is the definition and
demonstration of the applicability of mobile robot navigation in
unstructured environments based on a high level of abstraction.
Projects
During the PhD I participated in some projects and attended several courses to improve my knowledge on sensor fusion and mobile robot navigation techniques:
This work is concerned on a search and rescue, The Rescue Project - Cooperative Navigation for Rescue Robots, where
the main goal is to provide integrated solutions for the design of cooperative robots teams operating in outdoor environments. Search and Rescue (SAR) operations are a challenging application for Robotics
since, due to their nature, they naturally foster advances in Artificial Vision,
Navigation in outdoors unstructured environments, Distributed Artificial
Intelligence and Intelligent Control.
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- IAV 2004 – The 5th IFAC/EURON Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, Lisbon, Portugal
- ICAR 2003 – The 11th International Conference on Advanced Robotics, Coimbra, Portugal
- Robótica'2003 – Festival Nacional de Robótica, Lisbon, Portugal
- 1st International Workshop on Advances in Service Robotics, Bardolino, Italy
- European Summer School on Cooperative Robotics, Lisbon, Portugal
- Summer School on Simultaneous Localization & Mapping, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden
- 10th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, Lisbon, Portugal
- IST Doctoral Course Spring 2002, Linear and Non Linear Systems by Prof. António Pascoal, Lisbon, Portugal
- Summer School on Mobile Robot Navigation, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
- Dynamic Stochastic Estimation, Prediction and Smoothing by Prof. Michael Athans, Lisbon, Portugal
- Robótica'2001 – Festival Nacional de Robótica, UM, Guimarães, Portugal
- Spring School on Stochastic Optimization, UC, Coimbra, Portugal
- Controlo'2000: 4th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control, UM, Guimarães, Portugal
- 4º Encontro Nacional do Colégio de Engenharia Electrotécnica, FIL, Lisbon, Portugal
Publications
The main contributions are compiled in scientific papers, which are availble in the page with publications, emphasising the PhD thesis and the respecive presentation:
Grant
I received a PhD grant funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCT) with the reference SFRH/BD/929/2000 in the frame of POCTI (funds from FEDER and Portuguese Government) of QCAIII.
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