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World Modeling

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Springer Handbook of Robotics

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Abstract

In this chapter we describe popular ways to represent the environment of a mobile robot. For indoor environments, which are often stored using two-dimensional representations, we discuss occupancy grids, line maps, topological maps, and landmark-based representations. Each of these techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages. Whilst occupancy grid maps allow for quick access and can efficiently be updated, line maps are more compact. Also landmark-based maps can efficiently be updated and maintained, however, they do not readily support navigation tasks such as path planning like topological representations do.

Additionally, we discuss approaches suited for outdoor terrain modeling. In outdoor environments, the flat-surface assumption underling many mapping techniques for indoor environments is no longer valid. A very popular approach in this context are elevation and variants maps, which store the surface of the terrain over a regularly spaced grid. Alternatives to such maps are point clouds, meshes, or three-dimensional grids, which provide a greater flexibility but have higher storage demands.

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Abbreviations

EKF:

extended Kalman filter

EM:

expectation maximization

SLAM:

simultaneous localization and mapping

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Informatik, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Georges-Koehler-Allee 079, 79110, Freiburg, Germany

    Wolfram Burgard Prof

  2. The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., 15213, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Martial Hebert Prof

Authors
  1. Wolfram Burgard Prof
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  2. Martial Hebert Prof
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Correspondence to Wolfram Burgard Prof or Martial Hebert Prof .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. PRISMA Lab, Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Universitá degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 80125, Napoli, Italy, Via Claudio 21

    Bruno Siciliano Prof.

  2. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, 94305-9010, Stanford, CA, USA

    Oussama Khatib Prof.

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag

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Burgard, W., Hebert, M. (2008). World Modeling. In: Siciliano, B., Khatib, O. (eds) Springer Handbook of Robotics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30301-5_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30301-5_37

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