Boundary aware navigation and mapping for a mobile automaton

When autonomous mobile robots explore unknown terrain, map building is required for the vehicles to effectively and efficiently search the workspace with obstacle avoidance. In this paper, a boundary aware methodology is proposed for real-time autonomous robot navigation and mapping under unknown environments. An initial global trajectory is first created based on a re-planning technique before a LIDAR-based boundary aware local navigation approach is utilized to guide the robot locally with obstacle avoidance while building up its local map. Its effectiveness and efficiency of real-time simultaneous navigation and mapping for an autonomous robot were successfully validated by simulation and comparison studies.

I. Introduction

Real-time navigation and mapping is an essential requirement for autonomous robots in plenty of robotic applications. As a result, real-time simultaneous map building and robot navigation are desirable for efficient performance in many robotics applications. In some real world applications, environmental information has evolved into a complex form. The basic navigation problem for autonomous robots is concerned with finding a safe and good-quality collision-free path from an initial point to a destination while a local map is constructed. Real-time navigation and map building is a challenging task for autonomous robot, especially in unknown cluttered and dynamical environments.