Mapping Interior Spaces With Robots And GIS

Roland Piquepaille writes "In an article about GIS and Robotics, Directions Magazine reports that architects and other professionals can now use spatially intelligent robots to collect interior space data. With such mapping robots, it's possible to capture accurate data for over 10,000 square meters per day and to easily integrate it with existing software. The article doesn't mention the sources for its illustrations about these robotic systems, so I thought I'd point them out: a company in Maine called Penobscot Bay Media. You'll find more details and pictures about these mapping robots at ZDNet."

Here's the Video

[TubeSteak]

Coralized so as not to /. their server
15 MB http://www.penbaymedia.com.nyud.net:8080/demos/Spa tial-Robotics.wmv [nyud.net]

Re:30 years in the making

[Hrodgare]

Because modern mobile robots are only minimally similar to Shakey-- the algorithms which make mapping and localization possible are statistical, rather than logical, and Shakey was logic-based system. Furthermore, Shakey wasn't a whole lot more than a physical incarnation of a blocksworld agent. In a sense, all modern mobile robots are distantly related to Shakey-- but only in the same sense as they're distantly related to Rodney Brooks' subsumption architecture robots. I'm surprised this article is coming up as news; robots capable of mapping and localization tasks have been around for several years now, and there's a great deal of off the shelf software (open source and otherwise) capable of this.