Page 174 - Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots : Inside the Mindo f an Intellegent Machine

Hard Navigation vs. Fuzzy Navigation

Correction quality (believability)

Any good salesman can tell you that it is easier to convince a person of something
that is close to their belief system than of something that is outside of it. Likewise,
our robot will want to believe things that confirm its existing position estimate. The
problem is that we cannot apply a simple fixed threshold around the current esti-
mate, as explained in our example of the drunken robot. This is the second place
where our uncertainty estimate comes in.

B
B'

Measured Programmed
Positions Positions

Φ

Initial Position Estimate
A' A

Figure 11.8. Calculating heading error from two columns

157