The goal of this work is to illustrate and evaluate a novel method for communicating with a mobile robot, namely, by drawing a sketch. The user draws a sketched route map to direct a mobile robot along a specified path. In this paper we focus on the navigation of the sketched path in the real environment. Challenges include sketch inaccuracies such as distortion or abstraction and low sensory resolution of the robot. Our method is based on utilizing spatial relations to extract a sequence of qualitative landmark states from the sketched map, which in turn the robot follows in a real environment to replicate the sketched route. Several examples are included.

The goal of this work is to create a robot interface that allows a novice user to guide, control, and/or program a mobile robot to perform some task. To illustrate our interface we have chosen the example of robot navigation. We present a way to use a PDA computer to sketch a map and a robot route on this map. Qualitative instructions are then extracted from such a map to form a list of sequential steps that the robot has to follow to complete its task based on landmark states. We also demonstrate the feasibility of our approach on a Nomad200 robot simulator.

In human to human communication, a hand-drawn route map is often sketched to show a desired navigation path. In this paper, we describe a PDA sketching interface that can be used to direct a mobile robot along a specified path. Because sketched route maps are not drawn precisely or necessarily to scale, we do not attempt to analyze precise path information, but rather qualitative route information is extracted. The paper focuses on the front-end sketch understanding and includes a description of the interactive features, such as deleting, moving, and labeling landmarks. Results of a user evaluation are also presented, in which participants report that the sketching interface was as easy as using pencil and paper by a 2:1 margin.

We show how linguistic expressions can be generated to describe the spatial relations between a mobile robot and its environment, using readings from a ring of sonar sensors. Our work is motivated by the study of human-robot communication for non-expert users. The eventual goal is to use these linguistic expressions for navigation of the mobile robot in an unknown environment, where the expressions represent the qualitative state of the robot with respect to its environment, in terms that are easily understood by human users. In the paper, we describe the histogram of forces and its application to sonar sensors on a mobile robot. Several environment examples are also included with the generated linguistic descriptions.

Being able to interact and communicate with robots in the same way we interact with people has long been a goal of AI and robotics researchers. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to communicating a navigation task to a robot, which allows the user to sketch an approximate map on a PDA and then sketch the desired robot trajectory relative to the map. State information is extracted from the drawing in the form of relative, robot-centered spatial descriptions, which are used for task representation and as a navigation language between the human user and the robot. Examples are included of two hand-drawn maps and the linguistic spatial descriptions generated from the maps.