Navigation and path-planning of mobile robots with real-time map-building

This paper presents a navigation technique for a sonar-equipped mobile robot with real-time local map-building in unknown environments. A navigation algorithm is constructed with the proposed local map-building and reactive obstacle avoidance behaviors. The obtained local map could be used to build and/or update a global map of the environment. It is used to plan a desirable path for the next run. In navigation experiments using a commercial mobile robot named Pioneer-1, the built local map was effective for navigation in several environments compared to a reactive navigation technique without map-building, especially in complicated environments.