Partially unknown environment exploration algorithm for a mobile robot

Abstract

© 2019, Institute of Advanced Scientific Research, Inc.. All rights reserved. This paper introduces a new indoor environment exploration method, which is designed to consider robot sensory perception constraints and indoor spaces predictable structure. Our new method is compared with a greedy approach exploration. The two algorithms were implemented and tested in simulation and in real-world experiments with a Russian Servosila Engineer crawler rescue robot. Robot Operating System (ROS) framework was used both for simulations in Gazebo environment and for the real robot control. Our method demonstrated better results for large space exploration in simulations as well as within small indoor environment exploration experiments.