OENS: An Octomap Based Exploration and Navigation System

Unknown area mapping requires the ability to explore and navigate in an unmapped environment. Current state of the art systems mainly uses frontier detection-based approaches based on occupancy grids. In this paper we present a conceptually similar octomap based exploration system that is capable of identifying unexplored regions and an occupancy grid-based motion planning system that uses occupancy grids derived from the octomap for path planning. Exploration system evaluates the octomap utilizing the state of voxels and calculates target locations for navigation using a distance cost function. We have also proposed a performance evaluation criterion for exploration systems that considers the time, power consumption, and stability of the robot. Results of experiments show that the system proposed in this paper is about 38% faster than Explore-Lite system while mapping the same area of exploration.