Boundary aware navigation and mapping for a mobile automaton

Abstract

When autonomous mobile robots explore unknown terrain, map building is required for the vehicles to effectively and efficiently search the workspace with obstacle avoidance. In this paper, a boundary aware methodology is proposed for real-time autonomous robot navigation and mapping under unknown environments. An initial global trajectory is first created based on a re-planning technique before a LIDAR-based boundary aware local navigation approach is utilized to guide the robot locally with obstacle avoidance while building up its local map. Its effectiveness and efficiency of real-time simultaneous navigation and mapping for an autonomous robot were successfully validated by simulation and comparison studies.