ADVANCES INROBOTNAVIGATION  EditedbyAlejandraBarrera             Advances in Robot Navigation Edited by Alejandra Barrera Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access articles distributed under the Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike Attribution 3.0 license, which permits to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work in any medium, so long as the original work is properly cited. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published articles. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Natalia Reinić  Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer Jan Hyrat Image Copyright VikaSuh, 2010. Used under license from Shutterstock.com First published June, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Advances in Robot Navigation Edited by Alejandra Barrera p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-346-0 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com   Contents  Preface IX Part 1 Robot Navigation Fundamentals 1 Chapter 1 Conceptual Bases of Robot Navigation Modeling, Control and Applications 3 Silas F. R. Alves, João M. Rosário, Humberto Ferasoli Filho, Liz K. A. Rincón and Rosana A. T. Yamasaki Chapter 2 Vision-only Motion Controller for Omni-directional Mobile Robot Navigation 29 Fairul Azni Jafar, Yuki Tateno, Toshitaka Tabata, Kazutaka Yokota and Yasunori Suzuki Chapter 3 Application of Streaming Algorithms and DFA Learning for Approximating Solutions to Problems in Robot Navigation 55 Carlos Rodríguez Lucatero Chapter 4 SLAM and Exploration using Differential Evolution and Fast Marching 81 Santiago Garrido, Luis Moreno and Dolores Blanco Part 2 Adaptive Navigation 99 Chapter 5 Adaptive Navigation Control for Swarms of Autonomous Mobile Robots 101 Yasuhiro Nishimura, Geunho Lee, Nak Young Chong, Sang Hoon Ji and Young-Jo Cho Chapter 6 Hybrid Approach for Global Path Selection & Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance for Mobile Robot Navigation 119 D. Tamilselvi, S. Mercy Shalinie, M. Hariharasudan and G. Kiruba Chapter 7 Navigation Among Humans 133 Mikael Svenstrup VI Contents Part 3 Robot Navigation Inspired by Nature 159 Chapter 8 Brain-actuated Control of Robot Navigation 161 Francisco Sepulveda Chapter 9 A Distributed Mobile Robot Navigation by Snake Coordinated Vision Sensors 179 Yongqiang Cheng, Ping Jiang and Yim Fun Hu Part 4 Social Robotics 205 Chapter 10 Knowledge Modelling in Two-Level Decision Making for Robot Navigation 207 Rafael Guirado, Ramón González, Fernando Bienvenido and Francisco Rodríguez Chapter 11 Gait Training using Pneumatically Actuated Robot System 223 Natasa Koceska, Saso Koceski, Pierluigi Beomonte Zobel and Francesco Durante .    Preface  Robot navigation includes different interrelated activities such as perception‐ obtainingandinterpretingsensoryinformation; exploration‐thestrategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; mapping‐the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; localization‐the strategy to estimate the robot position within the sp atial map; path planning ‐the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and path execution, where motoractionsaredeterminedandadaptedtoenvironmentalchanges. The book integrates results from the research work of several authors all over the world, addressing the abovementioned activities and analyzing the critical im plications of dealing with dynamic environments. Different solutions providing adaptive navigation are taken from nature inspiration and diverse applications are describedinthecontextofanimportantfieldofstudy,socialrobotics. Thebookincludes11chaptersorganizedwithin4partsasfollows. RobotNavigationFundamentals In order to contex tualize the different approaches proposed by authors, this part provides an overview of core concepts involved in robot navigation. Specifically, Chapter1 introducesthe basics ofa mobile robot physicalstructure, its dynamic and kinematic modeling, the mechanisms for mapping, localization, and trajectory planning and reviews the state of the art of navigation methods and control architectures which enables high degree of autonomy. Chapter 2 describes a navigational system providing vision‐based localization and topological mapping of theenvironment.Chapter3depictspotentialproblemswhichmightariseduringrobot motion planning, while trying to define the appropriate sequence of movements to achieveagoalwithinanunce rtainenvironment. Closing this part, Chapter 4 presents a robot navigation method  combining an exploratory strategy that drives the robot to the most unexplored region of the environment, a SLAM algorithm to build a consistent map, and the Voronoi Fast Marchingtechniquetoplanthetrajectoryto wardsthegoal. X Preface AdaptiveNavigation Real scenarios involve uncertainty, thus robot navigation must deal with dynamic environments. The chapters included within this part are concerned with environmentaluncertaintyproposingnovelapproachestothischallenge.Particularly, Chapter 5 presents a multilayered approach to wheeled mobile robot  navigation incorporating dynamic mapping, deliberative planning, path following, and two dist inct layers of point‐to‐point reactive control. Chapter 6 describes a robot path planning strategy within an indoor environment employing the Distance Transform methodology and the Gilbert–Johnson–Keerthi distance algorithm to avoid colliding with dynamic obstacles. This hybrid method enables the robot to select the shortest pathtothegoaldu ringnavigation.Finally,Chapter7proposesanadaptivesystemfor natural motion interaction between mobile robots and humans. The system finds the position and orientation of people by using a laser range finder based method, estimates human intentions in real time through a Case‐Based Reasoning approach, allowsthe robot tonavigate arounda pers onby means ofanadaptive potential field that adjusts according to the person intentions, and plans a safe and comfortable trajectory employing an adapted Rapidly‐exploring Random Tree algorithm. The robotcontrolledbythissystemisendowedwiththeabilitytoseehumansasdynamic obstacleshavin gsocialzonesthatmustberespected. RobotNavigationInspiredbyNature In this part, authors focused on nature of proposing interesting approaches to robot navigation.Specifically,Chapter8addressesbrain interfaces‐systemsaimingtoena‐ bleuser control ofadevicebased on brain activity‐related signals. The author is con‐ cerned with brain‐computer interfaces that use non‐invasive technology, discussing theirpotentialbenefitstothefieldofrobotnavigation,especiallyindifficultscenarios in which the robot cannot successfully perform all functions without human assis‐ tance,suchasindangerousareaswheresensorsoralgorithmsmayfail. On the other hand, Chapter 9 investig ates the use of animal low level intelligence to controlrobotnavigation.Authorstookinspirationfrominsecteyeswithsmallnervous systems mimicking a mosaic eye to propose a bio‐mimetic snake algorithm that di‐ videstherobotpathintosegmentsdistributedamongdifferentvisionsen sorsproduc‐ ingcollisionfreenavigation. SocialRobotics Oneofthemostattractiveapplicationsofroboticsis,withoutdoubt,thehuman‐robot interactionby providing useful services. This final partincludes practicalcasesof ro‐ botsservingpeopleintwoimportantfields:guidingandrehabilitation. In Chapter 10, authors present a social robot specif ically designed and equipped for human‐robotinteraction,includingallthebasiccomponentsofsensorizationandnav‐ igation within real indoor/outdoor environments, and a two‐level decision making [...]... starting  point  to  acquire  knowledge of intelligent mobile robotics.    Alejandra Barrera Mexico’s Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM)  Mexico        XI Part 1 Robot Navigation Fundamentals 1 Conceptual Bases of Robot Navigation Modeling, Control and Applications Silas F R Alves1, João M Rosário1, Humberto Ferasoli Filho2, Liz K A Rincón1 and Rosana A T Yamasaki1 1State University of Campinas... with Robot Navigation, sensors are usually used for positioning and obstacle avoidance In the sense of positioning, sensors can be classified as relative or absolute (Borenstein et al., 19 95) Relative positioning sensors includes odometry and inertial navigation, which are methods that measures the robot position in relation to the robot initial point and its movements Distinctively, absolute positioning... Navigation Modeling, Control and Applications 5 2 .1 Robot Navigation systems and methods Navigation is the science or art of guiding of a mobile robot in the sense of how travel through the environment (McKerrow, 19 91) The problems related to the navigation can be briefly defined in three questions: “Where am I”, “Where am I going” and “How do I get there?” (Leonard & Durrant-White, 19 91) The first two... mobile robots are composed by wheels, legs or continuous track The aerial robots are robotic devices that can fly in different environment; generally this robots use propellers to move The aquatic robots can move under or over water Some examples for these applications are: the AirRobot UK® (Figure 1a), an aerial quad rotor robot (AirRobot, 2 011 ); the Protector Robot, (Figure 1b), built by Republic of Singapore... position measures (Everett, 19 95) Relative positioning uses odometry or inertial navigation Odometry is a simple and inexpensive navigation system; however it suffers from cumulative errors The inertial navigation (Barshan & Durrant-White, 19 95) uses rotation and acceleration measures for extracting positioning information Barshan and Durrant-White (19 95) presented an inertial navigation system and discusses... Martin and Rafael Enterprises (Protector, 2 010 ); and the BigDog robot (Figure 1c), created by Boston Dynamics (Raibert et al., 2 011 ), a robot that walks, runs and climbs in different environment a) b) c) Fig 1 Applications of Robot Navigation: a) Aerial Robot, b) Aquatic Robot, c)Terrestrial Robot There are two development trends: one declares that the project of any autonomous system must begin with... magnetic compasses readings are affected by power lines, metal structures, and even the robot movement, which introduces error to the system (Ojeda & Borenstein, 2000) 6 Advances in Robot Navigation Active beacons are devices which emits a signal that is recognized by the robot Since the active beacons are placed in known locations, the robot is able to estimate its position using triangulation or trilateration... are related to finding the correspondence between a local map, discovered with the robot sensors, and a known global map (Borenstein et al., 19 95) Inside model matching techniques, we can point out the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) The SLAM addresses to the problem of acquiring the map of the environment where the robot is placed while simultaneously locating the robot in relation to... are related to the internal elements of the robot, so they monitor the state of its inner mechanisms and devices, including joints positions In a different manner, exteroceptive sensors gather information from the environment where the robot is placed and generally are related to the robot navigation and application From the viewpoint of the measuring method, sensors are classified into active and passive... coordinates based system, like the naval navigation, uses the knowledge of one’s position inside a global coordinate system of the environment It is based on models (or maps) of the environment to generate paths to guide the robot Some techniques are Mapping (Latombe, 19 91) , Occupancy Grid Navigation (Elfes, 19 87), and Potential Fields (Arkin et al., 19 87) The behavior based system requires the robot . 2 011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Advances in Robot Navigation. The robot controlledbythissystemisendowedwiththeabilitytoseehumansasdynamic obstacleshavin gsocialzonesthatmustberespected. Robot Navigation InspiredbyNature In this part,  authors focused on nature of proposing interesting approaches to robot navigation. Specifically,Chapter8addressesbrain interfaces‐systemsaimingtoena‐ bleuser. Mobile Robot Navigation 11 9 D. Tamilselvi, S. Mercy Shalinie, M. Hariharasudan and G. Kiruba Chapter 7 Navigation Among Humans 13 3 Mikael Svenstrup VI Contents Part 3 Robot Navigation Inspired