12:00, 29 Oct 1997, WeH 7220

     A Probabilistic Approach for Concurrent Map Acquisition and
		    Localization for Mobile Robots

			   Sebastian Thrun

This chat addresses the problem of building large-scale geometric maps
if indoor environments with mobile robots.  It poses the map building
problem as a constrained, probabilistic maximum-likelihood estimation
problem. It then devises a practical algorithm for generating the most
likely map from data, along with the most likely path taken by the
robot.  Experimental results in cyclic environments of size up to 80
by 25 meter are presented, along with a video, of course!

Joint work with Wolfram Burgard and Dieter Fox (who visited this summer)