A Standard for Map Data Representation: IEEE 1873-2015 Facilitates Interoperability Between Robots

The availability of environment maps for autonomous robots enables them to complete several tasks. A new IEEE standard, IEEE 1873-2015, Robot Map Data Representation for Navigation (MDR) [15], sponsored by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and approved by the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board in September 2015, defines a common representation for two-dimensional (2-D) robot maps and is intended to facilitate interoperability among navigating robots. The standard defines an extensible markup language (XML) data format for exchanging maps between different systems. This article illustrates how metric maps, topological maps, and their combinations can be represented according to the standard.