Autonomous robots, such as automatic vacuum cleaners, toy robot dogs, and autonomous vehicles for the military, are rapidly becoming a part of everyday life. As a result the need for effective algorithms to control these agents is becoming increasingly important. Conventional path finding techniques rely on a representation of the world that can be analysed mathematically to find the best path. However, when an agent is placed into the real world in a place it has not seen before, conventional techniques frequently fail and a fundamentally different approach to path finding is required. The agent must rely on its senses, such as the input from a mounted camera, using this information to get around. We are especially interested in algorithms for use in highly interactive virtual environments such as computer games. In this paper we devise and analyse a technique which enables autonomous agents to navigate their way around a virtual city by using only what they see from their point of v...
Daniel Flower, Burkhard Wünsche, Hans W. Gues