The Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Abstract

We are interested in the problem of how a mobile robot can measure the area of a closed region that is beyond its immediate sensing range. Our inspiration comes from scout worker ants who assess potential nest cavities. These scouts work literally in dark to assess arbitrary closed spaces. Experimental studies have shown that the scouts can reliably reject nest sites that are small for the colony. These studies support the hypothesis that scouts use the ?Buffon's needle method? to measure the area of the nest. We have implemented the Buffon's needle method on a simulated mobile robot system and evaluated its performance through systematic experiments. The results show that the method can reliably measure the area of closed regions regardless of their shape and compactness, and that the method is undisturbed by partial barriers placed inside these regions.

Notes

Number of pages: 10

Text Reference

Sertan Girgin and Erol Sahin, "Blind area measurement with mobile robots," tech. report CMU-RI-TR-03-42, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, November, 2003

BibTeX Reference

@techreport{_2003_4533,
   author = "Sertan Girgin and Erol Sahin",
   title = "Blind area measurement with mobile robots",
   booktitle = "",
   institution = "Robotics Institute",
   month = "November",
   year = "2003",
   number= "CMU-RI-TR-03-42",
   address= "Pittsburgh, PA",
}

The Robotics Institute

Menu