ABSTRACT
Knowledge is central to a mobile robot’s ability to carry out its missions and adapt to changes in the environment. The knowledge subsystem must support acquisition of information from external sources, maintain prior knowledge, infer new knowledge from the knowledge that has been captured, and provide appropriate input to the planning subsystem. Mobile robots have especially challenging knowledge requirements in order to negotiate within and interact with uncertain and dynamic environments. The internal representation of the world has many implications for the effectiveness, reliability, efficiency, validity, and robustness of the mobile robot. A large number of the mobile robot systems implemented have relied on spatial representations. Symbolic representations provide ways of expressing knowledge and relationships, and of manipulating knowledge, including the ability to address objects by property. Any intelligent system has a limited vocabulary of actions that it may take in order to accomplish its goals.
