“Flying robots that can show true autonomy – and even a bit of politeness – in working together and venturing into hostile environments are being developed by engineers at the University of Sheffield.”

Source: www.sheffield.ac.uk

At the University of Sheffield, robots are building maps of and navigating within their environments, starting from a blank slate, except that they may have prior knowledge about the nature of particular objects, but not their locations.  The result is more detailed than a mere map of obstacles to be avoided.