Grid-Based Navigation for Autonomous, Mobile Robots

Navigation is a major challenge for autonomous, mobile robots. The problem can basically be divided into positioning and path planning. In this paper we present an approach which we call grid-based navigation. Though we also propose a scheme for path finding, we focus on positioning. Our approach uses minimal environmental infrastructure and only two light sensors on the mobile device itself. Starting out from a predefined tile and orientation in the grid, the mobile robot can autonomously head for destination tiles in the grid. On its way it determines the current location in the grid using a finite state machine by picking up linecrossing events with its sensors.