Exploration driven by local potential distortions

Integrated exploration using time-based potential rails

“…Prestes et al [4], [6] reformulate the exploration problem as a Dirichlet BVP for the Laplace equation. The unexplored regions have low potential, while the walls have high potential.…”

“…The unexplored regions have low potential, while the walls have high potential. The numerical solution is obtained through the finite-differences method [6]. The robot is always attracted to the larger or closer frontiers.…”

“…In our approach, we take advantage of the theory behind harmonic fields and the recently developed strategy to distort potentials [6] to force loop closing by favoring turns on bifurcations, which is a powerful strategy when the environment is not known a priori. This is done without the explicit need to switch the robot behavior.…”

“…Prestes et al [6] also developed a strategy to distort the potential field. This can change the robot movement while it is performing the gradient descent, without loosing the qualities of the Laplace Equation (e.g.…”

“…The global skeleton information enables the use of a local potential window, which reduces the computational cost of BVP and maintains the effectiveness of the method. We propose the use of potential distortions [6] to direct the robot to close loops (making turns). Moreover, our method never converges to a flattened potential field -even if there are no more unexplored boundary cells -since there will always be an "oldest cell".…”