Exploration problem

The exploration problem arises in robotic mapping and search & rescue situations, where an environment might be dangerous or inaccessible to humans.

[1] The exploration problem naturally arises in situations in which a robot is utilized to survey an area that is dangerous or inaccessible for humans.

[3] Current state of the art system include advanced techniques on active localization, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) based exploration, and multi-agent cooperative exploration.

The key concept in the exploration problem is the notion of information gain, that is, the amount of knowledge acquired while pushing the frontiers.

A probabilistic measure of information gain is defined by the entropy The function