Environment Classification and Semantic Grid Map Building Based on Laser Range Finder Data

Abstract

Human robot interaction has become an important area of research in the robotics community. High level abstractions, which are commonly used by humans, can be learnt by robots to effectively communicate with humans. In this paper, we propose a Semantic Grid Map (SGM) to represent an environment. SGM is similar to an Occupancy Grid (OG) map, however with high level information as environment type labels. We use a robot-mounted laser range finder (LRF) data to learn and classify an environment into various area types. Then the classification results are combined probabilistically to update the semantic grid map. The classification accuracy is further improved by outlier rejection and topological correction. Finally we present a labeling strategy while a robot is exploring an unknown environment. Experimental results of a robot exploring in a university environment are presented to assess the performance of the algorithm.