Colored 2D maps for robot navigation with 3D sensor data

This paper presents a navigation system for mobile service robots working in urban environments. The system combines a 3D laser sensor with 2D algorithms for path planning and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). In contrast to other map representations the colored 2D map, first presented in this paper, is able to hold information adapted to both localization and path planning. The functionality of our approach is demonstrated by an experiment for online navigation with 3D data.