# Navigation and Exploration with Active Inference: from Biology to Industry

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07269 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07269/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Aug 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Expected Free Energy-based Informative Path Planning for Robotic Mars Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14466/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

By building and updating internal cognitive maps, animals exhibit extraordinary navigation abilities in complex, dynamic environments. Inspired by these biological mechanisms, we present a real time robotic navigation system grounded in the Active Inference Framework (AIF). Our model incrementally constructs a topological map, infers the agent's location, and plans actions by minimising expected uncertainty and fulfilling perceptual goals without any prior training. Integrated into the ROS2 ecosystem, we validate its adaptability and efficiency across both 2D and 3D environments (simulated and real world), demonstrating competitive performance with traditional and state of the art exploration approaches while offering a biologically inspired navigation approach.