Digital Twin As An Integrated Mapping Platform: An Evolutionary Analysis of Approaches For Mobile Robot Navigation

Mobile robotics has advanced in parallel with the evolution of environment mapping techniques, increasing robot autonomy and adaptability in dynamic contexts. This paper analyzes the progression of metric, occupancy, topological, and semantic maps in mobile robots, showing how their characteristics and limitations can be enhanced with the emergence of the Digital Twin (DT) as an integrated paradigm for environment representation. The methodology combines a literature review, a bibliometric analysis of IEEE Xplore publications (2019-2024), and a comparative evaluation based on criteria such as spatial representation, adaptability, and information integration. Findings show that traditional mapping approaches provided the conceptual basis for mapping based on DT concept, which integrates multiple information layers to support simulation, monitoring, and predictive analysis. Overall, the results indicate that the DT is a promising paradigm for mobile robotics, particularly for multimodal data integration, robust navigation, and validation in high-fidelity virtual environments.