Inducing topological maps from task-oriented perception and exploratory behaviors

We describe motor and perceptual behaviors that have proven useful for indoor navigation of an autonomous mobile robot. These behaviors take advantage of the large amount of structure that characterizes many indoor, office-like environments. Based on pre-existing structural landmarks, a mobile robot has the ability to explore, map, and navigate one among several office buildings sharing similar structural features, while coping with slow environment variations and local dynamics. The mobile robot develops and maintains an internal representation of the environment in terms of a topological and qualitative map. The types of structural features suitable as navigation landmarks largely depend upon the available robot sensoriality. Adequate navigation performance is achieved by subdividing perception and navigation into a number of behaviors layered upon a multi-threaded real-time control architecture.