Mapping is a fundamental element for robotic services. There are available many types of map data representation such as grid map, metric map, topology map, etc. As more robots are deployed for services, more chances of exchanging map data among the robots emerge and standardization of map data representation (MDR) becomes more valuable. Currently, activities in developing MDR standard are underway in IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. The MDR standard is for a common representation and encoding of the two-dimensional map data used for navigation by mobile robots. The standard focuses on interchange of map data among components and systems, particularly those that may be supplied by different vendors. This paper aims to introduce MDR standard and its application to map merging. We have applied the basic structure of the MDR standard to a grid map and Voronoi graph as a kind of topology map and performed map merging between two different maps. Simulation results show that the proposed MDR is suitable for map data exchange among robots.

Recently researches on the window cleaning robot are being conducted actively. Moving mechanisms of these window cleaning robots are divided into two categories, which are towed type and walking type. Towed type is focused on fast cleaning on the flat surface of building and walking type has priority on cleaning task on relatively complex surface with overcoming obstacles. Currently commercialized towed type window cleaning robot has weakness that it is hard to adhere closely with the wall and easy to be affected by wind. In case of walking type it has the problem that the position errors are continuously accumulated during motion. In this paper, we propose new towed and walking type mechanism which can compensate previous weaknesses. After that we estimate the performance of each proposed mechanism by simulation.