Abstract
We review the current state of research in autonomous mobile robots and conclude that there is an inadequate basis for predicting the reliability and behavior of robots operating in unengineered environments. We present a new approach to the study of autonomous mobile robot performance based on formal statistical analysis of independently reproducible experiments conducted on real robots. Simulators serve as models rather than experimental surrogates. We demonstrate three new results: 1) Two commonly used performance metrics (time and distance) are not as well correlated as is often tacitly assumed. 2) The probability distributions of these performance metrics is exponential rather than normal, and 3) a modular, object-oriented simulation accurately predicts the behavior of the real robot in a statistically significant manner.
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© 1997 Springer-Verlag London Limited
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Gat, E. (1997). Towards principled experimental study of autonomous mobile robots. In: Khatib, O., Salisbury, J.K. (eds) Experimental Robotics IV. Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, vol 223. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0035229
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0035229
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Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-76133-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-40942-7
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