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 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V16-3YHG97R-K&_user=946230&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2000&_rdoc=9&_fmt=summary&_orig=browse&_srch=%23toc%235666%232000%23999699998%23159597!&_cdi=5666&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_acct=C000049009&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=946230&md5=8c30c4f00f8e97c08651032b4d118e90)):

	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: