Using CAD Drawings for Robot Navigation

1 This work has taken place in the Intelligent Robotics Lab at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin. Research of the Intelligent Robotics lab is supported in part by NSF grants IRI-9504138 and CDA 9617327, and by funding from Tivoli Corporation. Abstract Exploration and navigation of an environment by a robot usually involves the steps of mapping, localization and path planning. Here we look at the problem of navigation in an environment about which the robot has some a priori information available, namely in the form of an architectural CAD drawing. The CAD drawing is utilized to obtain: (i) a topological map of the environment which is used for large scale path planning between regions in the environment and (ii) a skeleton of each region in the environment for path planning within regions. We then propose that a hierarchy of representations consisting of the topological map, skeleton and a reactive hazard-avoidance control system can be used effectively for navigation and exploration by a robot.