Autonomous navigation of mobile robots: From basic sensing to problem solving

Autonomous navigation is a complex task that requires both sensing capabilities to react to sudden environmental changes or map the environment and reasoning to schedule the next action to perform. Starting from basic sensing technology used in the majority of mobile robotic systems, the introduction of sensor fusion techniques allows to obtain useful information to solve the localization, mapping and navigation problems. Applications of these methods to achieve specific robot capabilities will be presented starting from object detection and recognition, passing to scene classification and ending with an industrial related application: the visual inspection of industrial facilities by means of a flying vehicle.