It has been stated in psychology that human brain arranges information in a way that improves efficiency in performing common tasks, for example, information about our spatial environment is conveniently structured for efficient route finding. On the other hand, in computational sciences, the use of hierarchical information is well known for reducing the complexity of solving problems. This book studies hierarchical representations of large-scale space and presents a new model, called Multi-AH-graph, that uses multiple hierarchies of abstraction. It allows an agent to represent structural...

This book focuses on the performance of mobile robots through the use of multi-hierarchical symbolic representations of the environment.

To perform deliberative actions, a robot must possess some symbolic representation of its workspace, but representations of real environments can become so large that they must be conveniently arranged to facilitate and, in some cases, make possible their use. Practical solutions tested on real robots, for example a robotic wheelchair, are provided.

This book formalizes multiple abstraction (arranging knowledge hierarchically using more than one hierarchy) based on graphs, and studies in-depth its implications in path search, graph isomorphism, and in the automatic construction of multi-hierarchical structures. It also describes its application as a model of the large-scale space environment of mobile robots, including real mobile robots and a well-known computational model of the human cognitive map: the Spatial Semantic Hierarchy. This book is intended for PhD students and in general for robotics, computer science, and artificial...