This paper presents a novel robot-environment interaction in navigation tasks such that robots have neither a representation of their working space nor planning function, instead, an active environment takes charge of these aspects. This is realized by spatially deploying computing units, called cells, and making cells manage traffic in their respective physical region. Different from stigmegic approaches, cells interact with each other to manage environmental information and to construct instructions on how robots move. As a proof-of-concept, we present an architecture called AFADA and its prototype, consisting of modular cells and robots moving on the cells. The instructions from cells are based on a distributed routing algorithm and a reservation protocol. We demonstrate that AFADA achieves efficient robot moves for single-robot navigation in a dynamic environment changing its topology with a stochastic model, comparing to self-navigation by a robot itself. This is followed by several demos, including multi-robot navigation, highlighting the power of offloading both representation and planning from robots to the environment. We expect that the concept of AFADA contributes to developing the infrastructure for multiple robots because it can engage online and lifelong planning and execution.

中文翻译：

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用于机器人导航的主动模块化环境

本文提出了一种新型的导航任务中的机器人与环境的交互方式，使得机器人既无法表示其工作空间，也无法规划功能，而主动环境则负责这些方面。这是通过在空间上部署称为单元的计算单元并使单元管理其各自物理区域中的流量来实现的。与亵方式不同，细胞彼此交互以管理环境信息并构建有关机器人如何移动的指令。作为概念验证，我们介绍了一种称为AFADA的体系结构及其原型，该体系结构由模块化单元和在单元上移动的机器人组成。来自单元的指令基于分布式路由算法和预留协议。我们证明了AFADA在动态环境中通过随机模型改变其拓扑结构（与机器人自身的自我导航相比）可以实现单机器人导航的高效机器人移动。接下来是几个演示，包括多机器人导航，重点介绍了将表示和计划从机器人卸载到环境的强大功能。我们希望AFADA的概念有助于开发用于多个机器人的基础架构，因为它可以参与在线和终身计划和执行。