Navigation research

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