Robots depend on a world map representation in order to navigate on it. Only a part of the space around the agent can be sensed at each time and so measures must be taken in order to reduce the uncertainty of this map and likelihood of collision. In this work we propose the use of a probabilistic occupancy grid to guide active gaze of the robot on the “walk to target” task. A map uncertainty measure is proposed, as is a method for choosing gaze points along the robot’s computed trajectory to anticipate the need for trajectory changes.
Gaze points are chosen from the whole space volume the robot will traverse. Then, robot trajectories are computed directly on the probabilistic map in order to drive the robot towards free-space areas of high confidence. A preliminary evaluation of the approach is done on a real scenario using the humanoid robot KOBIAN for the preparatory gaze exploration task necessary for safe trajectory planning to a target.