Skip to main content

Mapping Polygons with Agents That Measure Angles

  • Conference paper
Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics X

Part of the book series: Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics ((STAR,volume 86))

Abstract

We study the problem of mapping an initially unknown environment with autonomous mobile robots. More precisely, we consider simplistic agents that move from vertex to vertex along the boundary of a polygon and measure angles at each vertex. We show that such agents are already capable of drawing a map of any polygon in the sense that they can infer the exact geometry up to similarity. Often, such tasks require the agent to have some prior bound on the size of the environment. In this paper, we provide an efficient reconstruction algorithm that does not need any a priori knowledge about the total number of vertices.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Ando, H., Oasa, Y., Suzuki, I., Yamashita, M.: Distributed memoryless point convergence algorithm for mobile robots with limited visibility. IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation 15(5), 818–828 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Biedl, T., Durocher, S., Snoeyink, J.: Reconstructing Polygons from Scanner Data. In: Dong, Y., Du, D.-Z., Ibarra, O. (eds.) ISAAC 2009. LNCS, vol. 5878, pp. 862–871. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Bilò, D., Disser, Y., Mihalák, M., Suri, S., Vicari, E., Widmayer, P.: Reconstructing visibility graphs with simple robots. Theoretical Computer Science 444, 52–59 (2012)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Brunner, J., Mihalák, M., Suri, S., Vicari, E., Widmayer, P.: Simple Robots in Polygonal Environments: A Hierarchy. In: Fekete, S.P. (ed.) ALGOSENSORS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5389, pp. 111–124. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Chalopin, J., Das, S., Disser, Y., Mihalák, M., Widmayer, P.: How Simple Robots Benefit from Looking Back. In: Calamoneri, T., Diaz, J. (eds.) CIAC 2010. LNCS, vol. 6078, pp. 229–239. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Chalopin, J., Das, S., Disser, Y., Mihalák, M., Widmayer, P.: Telling convex from reflex allows to map a polygon. In: Proceedings of the 28th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, pp. 153–164 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Chen, D., Wang, H.: An improved algorithm for reconstructing a simple polygon from the visibility angles. Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications 45, 254–257 (2012)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  8. Coullard, C., Lubiw, A.: Distance visibility graphs. In: Proceedings of the 7th Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry, pp. 289–296 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Disser, Y., Mihalák, M., Widmayer, P.: A polygon is determined by its angles. Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications 44, 418–426 (2011)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. Donald, B.R.: On information invariants in robotics. Artificial Intelligence 72(1-2), 217–304 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Ganguli, A., Cortés, J., Bullo, F.: Distributed deployment of asynchronous guards in art galleries. In: Proceedings of the 2006 American Control Conference, pp. 1416–1421 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Gfeller, B., Mihalák, M., Suri, S., Vicari, E., Widmayer, P.: Counting Targets with Mobile Sensors in an Unknown Environment. In: Kutyłowski, M., Cichoń, J., Kubiak, P. (eds.) ALGOSENSORS 2007. LNCS, vol. 4837, pp. 32–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Ghosh, S.K.: On recognizing and characterizing visibility graphs of simple polygons. Discrete and Computational Geometry 17(2), 143–162 (1997)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Ghosh, S.K.: Visibility Algorithms in the Plane. Cambridge University Press (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Ghosh, S.K., Goswami, P.P.: Unsolved problems in visibility graph theory. In: Proceedings of the India-Taiwan Conference on Discrete Mathematics, pp. 44–54 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Jackson, L., Wismath, S.K.: Orthogonal polygon reconstruction from stabbing information. Computational Geometry 23(1), 69–83 (2002)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  17. Katsev, M., Yershova, A., Tovar, B., Ghrist, R., LaValle, S.M.: Mapping and pursuit-evasion strategies for a simple wall-following robot. IEEE Transactions on Robotics 27(1), 113–128 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Komuravelli, A., Mihalák, M.: Exploring Polygonal Environments by Simple Robots with Faulty Combinatorial Vision. In: Guerraoui, R., Petit, F. (eds.) SSS 2009. LNCS, vol. 5873, pp. 458–471. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. O’Kane, J.M., LaValle, S.M.: On comparing the power of robots. International Journal of Robotics Research 27(1), 5–23 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. O’Rourke, J.: Uniqueness of orthogonal connect-the-dots. In: Toussaint, G.T. (ed.) Computational Morphology, pp. 97–104. North-Holland (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Rappaport, D.: On the complexity of computing orthogonal polygons from a set of points. Technical Report SOCS-86.9, McGill University, Montreal, Canada (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Sidlesky, A., Barequet, G., Gotsman, C.: Polygon reconstruction from line cross-sections. In: Proceedings of the 18th Annual Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry, pp. 81–84 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Snoeyink, J.: Cross-ratios and angles determine a polygon. Discrete and Computational Geometry 22(4), 619–631 (1999)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  24. Suri, S., Vicari, E., Widmayer, P.: Simple robots with minimal sensing: From local visibility to global geometry. International Journal of Robotics Research 27(9), 1055–1067 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yann Disser .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Disser, Y., Mihalák, M., Widmayer, P. (2013). Mapping Polygons with Agents That Measure Angles. In: Frazzoli, E., Lozano-Perez, T., Roy, N., Rus, D. (eds) Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics X. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 86. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36279-8_25

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36279-8_25

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36278-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36279-8

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics