Exploration of Unknown Environments by an Autonomous Mobile Robot: Candidacy Exam Syllabus

In this talk I will focus on the use of a mobile robot for autonomous exploration of an initially unknown environment. Here, by “exploration” I mean a task whose final or intermediate result is a model of this environment. I will consider the following aspects: • mobile robot sensors for environmental modeling • types of explored environments • types and structure of environment models • approaches to model updates • handling uncertainties There has been a lot of work done in the area of environmental modeling by mobile robots. To fit the requirements of the candidacy exam for scope and effort I had to make the following restrictions explicit: • I will only consider the perception and modeling modules of the robot architecture. Planning, navigation, obstacle avoidance, and control are beyond the scope of my talk • I will include localization only when it is done simultaneously with and inseparably from modeling • I will not consider exploration strategies or view point planning • I will not consider multi-robot systems