Networked Robots in the Informative Spaces

In this paper, the informative space is proposed to implant ubiquitous functions into physical spaces. We merge physical and virtual spaces through the space structurization using an RFID system, and solve the space localization and mapping problem for a robot to navigate through the distribution and synthesis of information and knowledge. To distribute knowledge flexibly and reliably to changing environment and also to develop a system which allows a robot to invoke and merge the distributed knowledge more freely, we employ a novel approach of knowledge management based on Web services. The proposed method is verified by building a physical space with two kinds of RFID tags and a virtual space with knowledge database based on Web services.