[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] September 4

[Marco Varisco]

BINGHAMTON GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
  http://www.math.binghamton.edu/dept/topsem/

Date:  Thursday, September 4, 2008

Time:  2:50 pm

Place:  Library North 2205
  (followed by coffee/tea in the Anderson Reading Room)

Speaker:  Lucas Sabalka (University of California, Davis)

Title:  Navigating blindly

Abstract:  Consider a robot, Bob, that has to get from its start
position S to a certain target point T. At all times, Bob knows its
location via a global positioning system. We examine the situation
when Bob has only tactile sensors and no visual sensors. In
particular, Bob does not know the locations of any obstacles until it
touches them. We discuss some known algorithms for mobile robot
navigation in 2 dimensions. Further, we present complexity estimates
for higher dimensional environments, and describe some new algorithms
in this setting.