The Characteristics of the Map Merging Methods: A Survey

Abstract

The Characteristics of the Map Merging Methods: A SurveyThe development of the autonomous mobile robots is a popular field of research in the artificial intelligence for more than twenty years. An important prerequisite for creation of autonomous robot is the ability to create a map of the environment. However there are several problems in the robotic mapping that are still not completely solved. The use of multiple robots for mapping solves some of these problems, but in this case several new problems, specific to multi-robot mapping, arise. One of the problems in multi-robot mapping is merging all of the local maps that robots have created into one global map. The application of the robot teams in the exploration is a relatively new research field and initially methods for multi-robot mapping were just extended single robot mapping methods. Consequently the map merging problem was simplified. The research of map merging has only recently evolved, thus existing papers on the map merging describe specific map merging methods and there are no comprehensive surveys on the state of the art in the field of map merging. Therefore the goal of this paper is to describe the situation in the field of the map merging and to identify the main characteristics of the map merging methods. The interrelations of these characteristics can then be identified and the corresponding map merging approaches of each characteristic set named.