Qualitative and Quantitative Representations of Locomotion and their Application in Robot Navigation

Qualitative and quantitative representations of space in general and motion in particular have their typical fields of application which are unified in an autonomously moving robot interacting with human beings. Therefore it is necessary to make some considerations on both approaches when dealing with such a robot. This paper presents quantitative and qualitative representations of locomotion and algorithms to deal with them. This work was applied to the navigation of a semi-autonomous wheelchair along routes in networks of corridors.