Problems and solutions in acquisition and interpretation of sensorial data on a mobile robot

We discuss some guidelines to cope with problems that arise when using cheap and simple sensors on mobile, autonomous, robotic agents. In particular we focus on the perceptual aliasing problem and on the possibility to perform active sensor data acquisition. We present a robotic architecture that we have implemented on a real robot following the proposed guidelines. The obtained mobile robot satisfies the design specifications, navigating autonomously in an unstructured environment.