2/26/2009 PERMALINK
Chaos filter helps navigation bot make sense of the world
As it navigates the streets of Oxford, unlike previous navigation bots, this one has the ability to cope with change and not become lost. The Oxford group's FabMap software gives it this capability by having the bot assign a visual "vocabulary" of up to a thousand individual "words" for each scene, every two seconds as it moves along Oxford's streets. This larger model lets the bot realize that multiple measured points close together can be a single object, allowing it to understand that it isn't somewhere new, but in a known location that has changed in a minor way by the arrival or departure of a parked car or bicycle ... more