Semantic Robot Navigation under Uncertain

Perception
Walter Mauricio Mayor Toro
and Anna Helena Reali Costa
Laboratorio de Tecnicas Inteligentes (LTI/EPUSP)
Escola Politecnica, Universidade de Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo, SP, Brasil
AbstractWe examine the use of semantic web resources
in robot navigation; more specifically, in qualitative navigation
where uncertain reasoning plays a significant role. We propose a
framework for robot navigation that connects existing semantic
web resources based on probabilistic description logics, with
probabilistic relational learning and planning. We show the
benefits of this framework in a real robot, presenting a case
study on how semantic web resources can be used to face sensor
and mapping uncertainty in a practical problem.

I.

I NTRODUCTION

There are today solid semantic web resources that encode

commonsense facts and allow uncertain reasoning. One particular example is the KnowRob system [1] for autonomous
robot support, where description logics and relational Bayesian
networks are mixed. Experience has shown that applications
in robotics can benefit from semantic information, but it is not
always easy to effectively bring these semantic web resources
into practical use. It is necessary to combine semantic information and low-level data, and to handle uncertain sensors
and incomplete maps. In this paper we propose a framework
for qualitative robot navigation that uses the probabilistic
description logic knowlege base in KnowRob to learn and
reason at a relational level. We also describe an implementation
with a simulated robot that demonstrates how semantic web
resources can work within applications that demand substantial
uncertain reasoning.
II.

in relational databases while projects like [5] integrates the

commonsense knowledge from the large OMICS database into
KnowRob by converting parts of the database into a description
logic representation. Currently, several mobile robot systems
use commonsense reasoning to perform navigation. Aydemir
et al [6] compute the probability of a perceived object to be
located in a particular place, using characteristics such as room
shape and appearance. Galindo and Saffioti [7] use semantic
knowledge to reason about object location.

R ELATED W ORKS

The idea that description logics (and probabilistic versions

of them) can be used in robotics is not new. Usually robots
have little common sense knowledge and cannot conclude,
for instance, that the detection of a refrigerator suggests the
current location to be a kitchen. Pure logical reasoning is
necessary, but not sufficient as sensors and actuators introduce
considerable uncertainty into the process, hence probabilities
must be employed in some way. Even raw data in the web
can be used in robotics [2], but automatic understanding
of such data is difficult. The KnowRob system (Knowledge
Processing for Autonomous Personal Robots) is an important
step in enabling such understanding [1]. KnowRob contains
a Semantic Web library that loads and accesses ontologies
represented in OWL. The system is based on SWI Prolog, resorting to description logics for knowledge representation, and
to Bayesian networks for uncertain reasoning. The Open Mind
Common Sense (OMCS) [3] and Open Mind Indoor Common
Sense (OMICS) [4] projects save commonsense information

III.

A F RAMEWORK FOR ROBOT NAVIGATION

We consider a robot with three important sources of

information. The first source is the robots sensors that detect
objects in the environment, doors, obstacles, and others. The
second source is the web database that provides commonsense
knowledge about, for example, the location of objects in
particular rooms. The third source is a semantic map that is
updated and consulted during navigation.
Unlike most existing robotic systems, we pursue reasoning
at a high level of abstraction. It is due to this decision that we
can effectively employ semantic web resources. The situation
of the robot is described in terms of a relational representation
that not only allows for abstraction of metric and sensory
details, but also enables knowledge to be generalized and
reused in new tasks. Information processing flows through
three major modules: Perception, Reasoning and Learning, and
Actuation. We call the whole architecture by Web-based Relational Robotic Architecture (WRRA), as depicted in Figure
1.

Figure 1: Overview of the Web-based Relational Robotic

Architecture.

IV.

E NVIRONMENT AND ROBOT

The robot we consider is a wheeled base (an ATRV 4wheeled base) equipped with 6 sensors: 3 semantic cameras, 2
odometers and 1 laser range scanner. We ran tests in a simulated environment (see Figure 2). This scenario was designed
with the open source tool for 3D creation, BLENDER1 , with
which we have created a 3D CAD representation of the house
and the objects it contains; the representation was integrated
with the MORSE simulator2 and the Robot Operating System
(ROS)3 . The environment is a house that has eight types of
rooms: 1 hallway (with some potted plants), 1 kitchen (with
1 stove, 1 fridge, and a dishwasher), 1 living room (with 1
sofa and 2 armchairs), 1 bathroom (with 1 toilet and 1 sink),
3 bedrooms (with 1 bed and 1 bedside), and 1 dining room
(with 1 table and 6 chairs).

Figure 2: Simulated house and robot.

V.

E XPERIMENTS AND R ESULTS

Here we describe a case study executed in the simulated

scenario, where we have great flexibility in defining tasks and
measuring behavior. Initially, the robot knows nothing about
the house and has only a generic abstract policy that defines
mappings from abstract situations into abstract behaviors. The
robot is given the goal of reaching the home kitchen. Then, the
robot perceives situations and selects the appropriate behavior
for each situation, until the target place be achieved. Figure 3
shows and describes a sequence of five situations faced by the
robot.
VI.

C ONCLUSION

In this paper we have explored the use of semantic web

resources to conduct probabilistic relational learning and reasoning in robot navigation. We have presented an architecture
(WRRA) for robot navigation that employs the KnowRob system and its knowledge base of probabilistic description logic
sentences, together with relational reinforcement learning. The
resulting framework shows how to use, in practice, semantic
web resources that can deal with uncertainty.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
we would like to thank: CNPq (proc. 155876/2012-0,
311058/2011-6) and FAPESP (proc. 2011/19280-8) for funding this research.
1 http://www.blender.org/
2 http://www.openrobots.org/wiki/morse/
3 http://wiki.ros.org/

Figure 3: Sequence of situations faced by the mobile robot in

case study.

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