Autonomous Navigation: Achievements in Complex Environments

During the past decade, an explosion of interest in the estimation of an autonomous robot´s location state and that of its surroundings, known as simultaneous localization and map building (SLAM), is evident. The goal of an autonomous vehicle performing SLAM is to build a map incrementally by using the uncertain information extracted from its sensors, while simultaneously using that map to localize itself with respect to a reference coordinate frame. To demonstrate the state of the art in autonomous navigation, this article focuses on outdoor research work within complex, semi-structured environments with an array of vehicles, using RADAR and laser range finders. Two classes of sensors that we use to get information are proprioceptive sensors and exteroceptive sensors. This paper focuses on sensor data interpretation, information extraction, and data association.