A method is presented for terrain acquisition by a finite-sized robot operating in-plane populated by an unknown (but, finite) number of polygonal obstacles; each obstacle is arbitrarily located and has unknown (but, finite) number of vertices. The robot progressively explores newer vertices of the obstacles using sensor equipment. The authors show that the complete terrain model will be built by the robot in a finite time. It is shown that at any point of time the partially acquired terrain suffices for the navigation of the robot during the exploration. It is concluded that the navigation techniques for known terrains can be applied for the robot navigation during exploration.
