Topology & Geometric Group Theory Seminar

Fall 2008

1:30 – 2:30, Malott 406

Tuesday, September 9

Lucas Sabalka, UC Davis


Navigating blindly

Consider a robot, Bob, that has to get from its start position S to a certain target point T. At all times, Bob knows its location via a global positioning system. We examine the situation when Bob has only tactile sensors and no visual sensors. In particular, Bob does not know the locations of any obstacles until it touches them. We discuss some known algorithms for mobile robot navigation in 2 dimensions. Further, we present complexity estimates for higher dimensional environments, and describe some new algorithms in this setting.

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