Kidnapped robot problem

In robotics, the kidnapped robot problem is the situation where an autonomous robot in operation is carried to an arbitrary location.{{cite book |last1=Engelson|first1=S.P.|last2=McDermott|first2=D.V.|title=Proceedings 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation |chapter=Error correction in mobile robot map learning |year=1992|pages=2555–2560|doi=10.1109/ROBOT.1992.220057 |isbn=0-8186-2720-4 |s2cid=38811217 }}Howie M. Choset et al. (2005). Principles of robot motion: theory, algorithms, and implementation. p.302.

The kidnapped robot problem creates significant issues with the robot's localization system, and only a subset of localization algorithms can successfully deal with the uncertainty created; it is commonly used to test a robot's ability to recover from catastrophic localization failures.