Abstract
During exploration of an unknown environment by a single robot, the
robot is driven by two conflicting goals: to explore as fast as
possible; and to produce the most accurate map. While fast exploration
necessitates  minimizing traversal of already mapped territory, accurate
mapping requires that the robot passes over previously explored areas to
reduce the localization and map uncertainty. This problem has been
labeled as exploration versus exploitation. In this paper the problem
of mapping a camera sensor network by a mobile robot has been used to
demonstrate the effect that different exploration strategies have on
uncertainty and speed of exploration. Simulation results using a
realistic noise model are presented for different environments and for
different strategies.