Navigation & SLAM

Line Following

Line following is a classic mobile robot navigation behavior in which the robot tracks a visual or magnetic guide line on the floor, historically using arrays of infrared reflectance sensors feeding a PID steering controller. It remains widely used by automated guided vehicles in factories and warehouses, where taped or painted paths provide simple, highly reliable routing, and it serves as a canonical introductory problem in robotics education.

Why it matters for physical AI

Guide-line navigation illustrates the infrastructure-versus-autonomy trade-off: fixed paths deliver near-perfect reliability cheaply, setting the dependability bar that free-ranging learned navigation must meet to displace them.