On terrain acquisition by a point robot amidst polyhedral obstacles

Abstract

The authors consider the problem of terrain model acquisition by a roving point placed in an unknown terrain populated by stationary polyhedral obstacles in two/three dimensions. The motivation for this problem is that after the terrain model is completely acquired, navigation from a source point to a destination point can be achieved along the collision-free paths. This can be done without the usage of sensors by applying the existing techniques for the find-path problem. In the paper, the point robot autonomous machine (PRAM) is used as a simplified abstract model for real-life roving robots. An algorithm is presented that enables PRAM to autonomously acquire the model of an unexplored obstacle terrain composed of an unknown number of polyhedral obstacles in two/three dimensions. In this method, PRAM undertakes a systematic exploration of the obstacle terrain with its sensor that detects all the edges and vertices visible from the present location, and builds the complete obstacle terrain model. >