How to Make Spatial Measurements and Maps

Making perceptual hypotheses about the world using sensing measurements is a classical problem in robotics. Consider, for example, a mobile robot equipped with a ring of sonar (ultrasound) sensors. Given a particular measurement, i.e., a particular set of sonar values, we may variously hypothesize that an object is just to the right or just to the left of the robot. Depending on the hypothesis, the robot may then move straight ahead or turn left or right.