LANSKY@SRI-AI.ARPA (02/27/86)
REPRESENTATION AND ESTIMATION OF SPATIAL UNCERTAINTY
Randy Smith (SMITH@SRI-AI)
Robotics Lab, SRI International
11:00 AM, MONDAY, March 3
SRI International, Building E, Room EJ228 (new conference room)
Current work on a method for geometrical reasoning under uncertainty
will be presented. Such a reasoning component will be important to
planning systems for many robotic applications, including autonomous
navigation and industrial automation.
A general method will be described for estimating the values and
estimated errors in the relationship between objects whose locations
are represented by coordinate frames. The elements in the
relationship may be described by bounding intervals, or may be
described by means and covariances, if a statistical model is
available. The relationship between the frames (objects) may not be
explicitly given, but known only indirectly through a series of
spatial relationships, each with its associated error. This
estimation method can be used to answer such questions as whether a
camera attached to a robot is likely to have a particular object in
its field of view. More generally, this method makes it possible to
decide in advance if an uncertain relationship is known accurately
enough for some task to be accomplished, and if not, how much of an
improvement in locational knowledge a proposed sensing action will
provide. The calculated estimates agree very well with those from an
independent Monte Carlo simulation. The method presented can be
generalized to six degrees of freedom, and provides a practical means
of estimating the relationships (position and orientation) between
objects as well as the uncertainty associated with the relationship.
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