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Chapter 1
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2104-6.ch001
CHAPTER GUIDELINE
• You will learn:
◦ The reasons why robotic manipula-
tors have been much more successful
in practical applications than mobile
robots up to now, and the role of the
problems of localization and map-
ping in this distinction.
◦ A little on the history of mobile
robotics.
◦ How the rest of the book is organized
and how to employ it depending on
your purposes.
• Provided tools:
◦ A taxonomy for the classication
of the problems of localization and
mapping, aimed at identifying the ad-
equate approach for each situation.
• Relation to other chapters:
◦ This chapter provides an overview
of all subsequent chapters and their
organization.
1. OVERVIEW
Robotics is a complex and fascinating discipline,
not only for scientists. The idea of creating artifacts
that perform autonomously and intelligently has
appeared from time to time throughout the history
of humankind in a variety of ways, ranging from
the fearsome mythological form of the Golem of
the early Judaism (Idel, 1990) to the inoffensive
and very amusing automata of Jacques de Vau-
canson in the 18
th
century (Landes, 2007), until it
was definitely solidified in the last six decades of
our era. In the transition from the 19
th
to the 20
th
century, science-fiction literature was already a
Introduction
ABSTRACT
In this rst chapter of the book, the authors provide an overview of the problems of mobile robot local-
ization and mapping, including taxonomies over the axes of the representation of spatial knowledge,
the structure and dynamics of the environment, the sensory apparatus of the robot, the motor apparatus
of the robot, and the previous knowledge. They also provide a brief historical timeline and fundamental
concepts. The goal is to provide the reader with a roadmap of the problems and also of the book, in order
to allow her or him to choose the best way of approaching the text and also an appropriate understand-
ing of the main limitations of the existing methods.
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