Terrain acquisition algorithm for an autonomous mobile robot with finite-range sensors
John M. Smith, Chang Y. Choo, Nasser M. Nasrabadi · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1991
This paper presents a terrain model acquisition algorithm for a mobile robot with finite-range sensors in planar terrains. The finite two- dimensional terrain is populated by a finite number of stationary polygonal obstacles. If the robot can see only partial obstacle edge(s) because of its limited range of visibility, our algorithm guides the robot toward the direction in which the incomplete edge of the obstacle is completed at the end vertex. If the robot can see nothing at all within the current range, it is guided in a spiral-like manner to search the terrain for obstacles. In this paper, we formally describe this algorithm and show how it performs with respect to travel distance and the number of scanning operations for various sensor ranges. Also, some examples are shown.