Viewpoint planning in map updating task for improving utility of a map

Many mobile robots use maps for path planning. However, due to changes of obstacle configurations in the environment, the utility of the map is often deteriorated. In this paper, we address a problem of map updating task, where a robot automatically explores the environment to update a map. This task is different from well known map making task in that the robot can estimate global structure of the environment by using the map of a past environment. This enables a map updating robot effective viewpoint planning. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for motion planning in the task, in which utility of the map for its users can be taken into account.