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.

This paper presents a method of sonar grid map matching for topological place recognition. The proposed method provides an effective rotation invariant grid map matching method. A template grid map is firstly extracted for reliable grid map matching by filtering noisy data in local grid map. Using the template grid map, the rotation invariant grid map matching is performed by Ring Projection Transformation. The rotation invariant grid map matching selects candidate locations which are regarded as representative point for each node. Then, the topological place recognition is achieved by calculating matching probability based on the candidate location. The matching probability is acquired by using both rotation invariant grid map matching and the matching of distance and angle vectors. The proposed method can provide a successful matching even under rotation changes between grid maps. Moreover, the matching probability gives a reliable result for topological place recognition. The performance of the proposed method is verified by experimental results in a real home environment

This paper presents a method of topological modeling using only low-cost sonar sensors. The proposed method constructs a topological model by extracting sub-regions from the local grid map. The extracted sub-regions are considered as nodes in the topological model, and the corresponding edges are generated according to the connectivity between two sub-regions. A grid confidence for each occupied grid is evaluated to obtain reliable regions in the local grid map by filtering out noisy data. Moreover, a convexity measure is used to extract sub-regions automatically. Through these processes, the topological model is constructed without predefining the number of sub-regions in advance and the proposed method guarantees the convexity of extracted sub-regions. Unlike previous topological modeling methods which are appropriate to the corridor-like environment, the proposed method can give a reliable topological modeling in a home environment even under the noisy sonar data. The performance of the proposed method is verified by experimental results in a real home environment.