Whereas originally the term Navigation applies to the process of directing a ship to a destination, Navigation research deals with fundamental aspects of navigation in general. It can be defined as "The process of determining and maintaining a course or trajectory to a goal location" (Franz, Mallot, 2000). It concerns basically all moving agents, biological or artificial, autonomous or remote-controlled.
Franz and Mallot proposed a navigation hierarchy (Robotics and Autonomous Systems 30 (2000), 133-153):
Behavioural prerequisite | Navigation competence | |
Local navigation | ||
Search | Goal recognition | Finding the goal without active goal orientation |
Direction-following | Align course with local direction | Finding the goal from one direction |
Aiming | Keep goal in front | Finding a salient goal from a catchment area |
Guidance | Attain spatial relation to the surrounding objects | Finding a goal defined by its relation to the surroundings |
Way-finding | ||
Recognition-triggered response | Association sensory pattern-action | Following fixed routes |
Topological navigation | Route integration, route planning | Flexible concatenation of route segments |
Survey navigation | Embedding into a common reference frame | Finding paths over novel terrain |
There are two basic methods for navigation:
- Egocentric navigation
- Allocentric navigation