Mobile Robot Exploration by Using Environmental Boundary Information

Abstract

We present the method of exploration using environmental boundary information for an indoor map generation problem of a mobile robot. We introduce an exploration method by (i) integration of the exploration method with Reaction-Diffusion Equation on a Graph (RDEG) and connected components labeling and (ii) a replanning framework in updating exploration plan for the currently obtained sensor information. Our approach has been implemented in simulation environments and has been compared with two existing methods: frontier-based exploration method and zig-zag method. The results demonstrate the efficiency of our approach over others. Lastly, the approach was implemented and tested on an actual robot, demonstrating its efficiency in a real-world situation.