Autonomous indoor robot navigation using sketched maps and routes

Hand drawn sketches are natural means by which a high level description of an environment can be provided. They can be exploited to impart coarse prior information about the scene to a robot, thereby enabling it to perform autonomous navigation and exploration when a full metrical description of the scene is not available beforehand. In this paper, we present a navigation system supplemented by a tablet interface that allows a user to sketch a rough map of an indoor environment and a desired trajectory for the robot to follow. We propose a novel theoretical framework for sketch interpretation based upon the manifold formalism in which associations between the sketch and the real world are modeled as local deformation of a suitable metric manifold. We also present empirical results from experimental evaluations of our approach in real world scenarios both from the perspective of the navigation capability and the usability of the interface.