Robotics
3/12
Module 3 of 12·19 min readExplorer
Sensing and Perception
The Perception Problem
A delivery robot has a chicken-and-egg problem. It needs a map to know where it is, but it needs to know where it is to build the map.
This is SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), one of the canonical challenges in robotic perception, and it captures something essential about why sensing is hard. The robot is not just collecting data. It is constructing, in real time, a model of a world that is shifting around it: people walking, doors opening, lighting changing, objects being moved. The model is never finished. It is never fully accurate. And every decision the robot makes depends on it.
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