20 years of progress in mobile robotics: a historical perspective

Abstract

The study of mobile robotics emerged as a scientific discipline with experiments on path planning and navigation on the Shakey system at SRI. The field exploded with interest in the early 1 9 8 0 ’ ~ ~ inspired in part by funding from the US DARPA Autonomous Vehicle program. By the late 1980’s the field had sufficiently blossomed to take an important role in robotics science, as evident from the number of papers in conferences and journals. Many techniques reported in scientific conferences in the late 90’s are modem instantiations of techniques first reported in the mid and late 1980’s.