Information spaces for mobile robots

Abstract

Planning with sensing uncertainty is central to robotics. Sensor limitations often prevent accurate state estimation of the robot. Two general approaches can be taken for solving robotics tasks given sensing uncertainty. The first approach is to estimate the state and to solve the given task using the estimate as the real state. However, estimation of the state may sometimes be harder than solving the original task. The other approach is to avoid estimation of the state, which can be achieved by defining the information space, the space of all histories of actions and sensing observations of a robot system. Considering information spaces brings better understanding of problems involving uncertainty, and also allows finding better solutions to such problems. In this paper we give a brief description of the information space framework, followed by its use in some robotic tasks.