Visual map making for a mobile robot

Mobile robots sense their environment and receive error laden readings. They try to move a certain distance and direction, and do so only approximately. Rather than try to engineer these problems away it may be possible, and may be necessary, to develop map making and navigation algorithms which explicitly represent these uncertainties, but still provide robust performance. The key idea is to use a relational map, which is rubbery and stretchy, rather than try to place observations in a 2-d coordinate system.