Spatial representation for navigation in animats

This article considers the problem of spatial representation for animat navigation systems. It is proposed that the global navigation task, or "wayfinding, " is best supported by multiple interacting subsystems, each of which builds its own partial representation of relevant world knowledge. Evidence from the study of animal navigation is reviewed to demonstrate that similar principles underlie the wayfinding behavior of animals, including humans. A simulated wayfinding system is described that embodies and illustrates several of the themes identified with animat navigation. This system constructs a network of partial models of the quantitative spatial relations between groups of salient landmarks. Navigation tasks are solved by propagating egocentric view information through this network, using a simple but effective heuristic to arbitrate between multiple solutions

Distributed sensor fusion for object tracking

In a dynamic situation like robot soccer any individual player can only observe a limited portion of their environment at any given time. As such to develop strategies based upon planning and cooperation between different players it is imperative that they be able to share information which may or may not be in any individual player's field of vision. In this paper we propose a method for multi-agent cooperation for perception based upon the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) which enables players to track objects absent from their field of vision and also to improve the accuracy of position and velocity estimates of objects in their field of vision. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006