R-Map : A hybrid map for mobile robot in ubiquitous computing environment

Abstract

Building a map is an important task for service robots to process given tasks in ubiquitous computing. However, this task usually consumes lots of resources of the robots hindering the services, and also results in a partial map due to the size of the map, increasing in proportion to the complexity of the environment. For this reason a map is difficult to support different types of devices under ubiquitous computing. To share map information among the robots, a map should be small and show an entire workspace. To address this concern, we propose a hybrid map, R-Map, which is built by extracting topological information out of a grid map by a simple rule; Find the largest free rectangular area recursively in a given area. Our simulation shows that the R-map algorithm provides an accurate representation of an environment with less number of rectangles, thus efficiently reducing space complexity. © 2013 International Information Institute.