Deep learning of structured environments for robot search

Robots often operate in built environments containing underlying structure that can be exploited to help predict future observations. In this work, we present a framework based on convolutional neural networks to predict point of interest locations in structured environments. The proposed technique exploits the inherent structure of the environment to train a convolutional neural network that is leveraged to facilitate robotic search. We start by investigating environments where the full environmental structure is known, and then we extend the work to unknown environments. Experimental results show the proposed framework provides a reliable method for increasing the efficiency of current search methods across multiple domains. Finally, we demonstrate the proposed framework increases the search efficiency of a mobile robot in a real-world office environment.