title: How Albot0 finds its way home: a novel approach to cognitive mapping using robots.
abstract: Much of what we know about cognitive mapping comes from observing how biological agents behave in their physical environments, and several of these ideas were implemented on robots, imitating such a process. In this paper a novel approach to cognitive mapping is presented whereby robots are treated as a species of their own and their cognitive mapping is being investigated. Such robots are referred to as Albots. The design of the first Albot, Albot0 , is presented. Albot0 computes an imprecise map and employs a novel method to find its way home. Both the map and the return-home algorithm exhibited characteristics commonly found in biological agents. What we have learned from Albot0 's cognitive mapping are discussed. One major lesson is that the spatiality in a cognitive map affords us rich and useful information and this argues against recent suggestions that the notion of a cognitive map is not a useful one.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research, Auckland University of Technology.
authors.forename: Wai K
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Yeap
mesh_terms: D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D062206:Spatial Analysis; D065854:Spatial Navigation / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Cognitive mapping; Inexact map; Robotics; Spatial cognition