Leonard和Durrant-Whyte（1991）通过三个问题总结了移动机器人导航的一般问题：“我在哪里？”，“我要去哪里？”和“我应该如何到达那里？”。 本文报告了旨在回答第一个问题的传感器，系统，方法和技术的最新技术，即：机器人在其环境中的定位。

通过调查大量有关移动机器人定位的文献，最重要的结果也许是，迄今为止，还没有真正优雅的解决方案。 许多部分解决方案可以大致分为两类：相对位置测量和绝对位置测量。

由于缺乏单一的，通常较好的方法，自动导引车（AGV）和移动机器人的开发人员通常将两种方法结合起来，每种方法中的一种。 这两个类别可以进一步分为以下子组。

Leonard and Durrant-Whyte [1991] summarized the general problem of mobile robot navigation bythree questions: “Where am I?,” “Where am I going?,” and “How should I get there?.” This reportsurveys the state-of-the-art in sensors, systems, methods, and technologies that aim at answering thefirst question, that is: robot positioning in its environment.

Perhaps the most important result from surveying the vast body of literature on mobile robotpositioning is that to date there is no truly elegant solution for the problem. The many partialsolutions can roughly be categorized into two groups: relative and absolute position measurements.

Because of the lack of a single, generally good method, developers of automated guided vehicles(AGVs) and mobile robots usually combine two methods, one from each category. The twocategories can be further divided into the following subgroups.