Systematic use of deictic commands for mobile robot navigation

Abstract

This thesis systematizes the previously ad hoc specification of targets and motion commands for visual deictic control of mobile robots, which enables control of mobile robots in the real world without requiring foreknowledge of the environment. Whereas ad hoc (or generic) visual targets may be scattered densely enough in the world to support deictically controlled navigation, and whereas environment-independent motion commands may suffice in open enough spaces, real environments in which robots would be useful cannot in general be relied upon to be sufficiently serendipitous. Instead, this thesis abstracts from the structure of the world a well-defined set of canonical targets and motion commands relative to those targets which together support general-purpose navigation. Canonical targets are a superset of those identified as critical by a visibility graph analysis. Targets and commands are also defined to position a robot at its goal location for the performance of whatever task it ...