Quantitative Performance Metrics for Mobile Robots Navigation

摘要

This chapter provides an analysis on several performance metrics to contrast mobile robots navigation algorithms including safety, dimension and smoothness of the trajectory. The suggested metrics are quite straight forward, however, it has been shown that they can be used together to systematize simulated or experimental studies on control algorithms for mobile robot navigation. A very simple application example was presented. The obtained results demonstrate the need to establish a procedure that can be used to analyze and compare control algorithms using several performance metrics. This is an open topic of research. It is becomes necessary to establish proper approaches and benchmarking procedures, for example, using standard framework of benchmarks for navigation algorithm and performance evaluation. This metrics can be applied in simulated environments, but the performance metrics evaluation is more important in real environments. Many of the challenges in robot navigation come from the challenges of real environments, such an uncertainty in the sensors and the errors in odometry, and this, in general, is not considered in simulation.