12/18/09 — Four universities working under the European Union’s Rawseeds project have developed set of free benchmarking tools that allow roboticists to effectively compare different Simultaneous Localization and Mapping approaches and algorithms against each other for the first time. “What does the world look like?” and “where am I?” are two questions robots must solve if they are to act autonomously in an unknown environment. Work by European researchers will help future robot generations provide smarter answers. The process by which robots use vision, laser and/or sonar sensors to map an environment and, at the same time, determine their location in it…