Principles of goal-directed spatial robot navigation in biomimetic models

M. Milford, R. Schulz
2014 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences  
One contribution of 18 to a Theme Issue 'The principles of goal-directed decisionmaking: from neural mechanisms to computation and robotics'. Subject Areas: neuroscience, computational biology Mobile robots and animals alike must effectively navigate their environments in order to achieve their goals. For animals goal-directed navigation facilitates finding food, seeking shelter or migration; similarly robots perform goaldirected navigation to find a charging station, get out of the rain or
more » ... e a person to a destination. This similarity in tasks extends to the environment as well; increasingly, mobile robots are operating in the same underwater, ground and aerial environments that animals do. Yet despite these similarities, goal-directed navigation research in robotics and biology has proceeded largely in parallel, linked only by a small amount of interdisciplinary research spanning both areas. Most state-of-the-art robotic navigation systems employ a range of sensors, world representations and navigation algorithms that seem far removed from what we know of how animals navigate; their navigation systems are shaped by key principles of navigation in 'real-world' environments including dealing with uncertainty in sensing, landmark observation and world modelling. By contrast, biomimetic animal navigation models produce plausible animal navigation behaviour in a range of laboratory experimental navigation paradigms, typically without addressing many of these robotic navigation principles. In this paper, we attempt to link robotics and biology by reviewing the current state of the art in conventional and biomimetic goal-directed navigation models, focusing on the key principles of goal-oriented robotic navigation and the extent to which these principles have been adapted by biomimetic navigation models and why.
doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0484 pmid:25267826 pmcid:PMC4186237 fatcat:7s7sywg2r5belfwvupwxzcgdmq