Outdoor navigation using natural landmarks by teaching-playback scheme

In this paper, we report the outdoor navigation of an autonomous and self-contained mobile robot using the perceived route map (PRM) generated through human assisted route teaching. The PRM includes the path from the start to the goal taught by the operator and landmark information are automatically generated by the robot itself. The target environment is a paved or tiled pedestrian walkway. The pedestrian walkway can be assumed to be a two dimensional plane along with a wall, a hedge or a tree, etc., which can be utilized as landmarks for estimating the robot position. The robot is assumed to have sensors to detect landmarks and obstacles. A walking person or bicycle is assumed to be a moving obstacle.