A Low Overhead Mapping Scheme for Exploration and Representation in the Unknown Area

The grid map, representing area information with the number of cells, is a widely used mapping scheme for mobile robots and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) processes. However, the tremendous amount of cells in a grid map for a detailed map representation results in overheads for memory space and computing paths in mobile robots. Therefore, to overcome the overhead of the grid map, this study proposes a new low overhead mapping scheme which the authors call as the Rmap that represents an area with variable sizes of rectangles instead of the number of cells in the grid map. This mapping scheme also provides an exploration path for obtaining new information for the unknown area. This study evaluated the performance of the Rmap in real environments as well as in simulation environments. The experiment results show that the Rmap can reduce the overhead of a grid map. In one of our experimental environments, the Rmap represented an area with 85% less memory than the grid map. The Rmap also showed better coverage performance compared with other previous algorithms.