Integration of metric place relations in a landmark graph

Abstract

This paper describes a graph embedding procedure which extends the topologic information of a landmark graph with position estimates. The graph is used as an environment map for an autonomous agent, where the graph nodes contain information about places in two different ways: a panoramic image containing the landmark configuration and the estimated recording position. Calculation of the graph embedding is done with a modified " multidimensional scaling" algorithm, which makes use of distances and angles between nodes. It will be shown that especially graph circuits are responsible for preventing the path integration error from unbounded growth. Furthermore a heuristic for the MDS-algorithm is described, which makes this scheme applicable to the exploration of larger environments. The algorithm is tested with an agent building a map of a virtual environment. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.