Whereas originally the term Navigation

Navigation

Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks...

 applies to the process of directing a ship to a destination, Navigation research deals with fundamental aspects of navigation in general. It can be defined as "The process of determining and maintaining a course or trajectory to a goal location" (Franz, Mallot, 2000).
It concerns basically all moving agents

Agent (grammar)

In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the cause or initiator of an event. Agent is the name of the thematic role...

, biological

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 or artificial, autonomous or remote-controlled.

Franz and Mallot proposed a navigation hierarchy in Robotics and Autonomous Systems 30 (2006):

	Behavioural prerequisite	Navigation competence
Local navigation
Search	Goal recognition	Finding the goal without active goal orientation
Direction-following	Align course with local direction	Finding the goal from one direction
Aiming	Keep goal in front	Finding a salient goal from a catchment area
Guidance	Attain spatial relation to the surrounding objects	Finding a goal defined by its relation to the surroundings
Way-finding
Recognition-triggered response	Association sensory pattern-action	Following fixed routes
Topological navigation	Route integration, route planning	Flexible concatenation of route segments
Survey navigation	Embedding into a common reference frame	Finding paths over novel terrain

There are two basic methods for navigation:

• Egocentric navigation also known as Idiothetic navigation
• Allocentric navigation also known as Allothetic navigation

Robotic navigation

Outdoor robots can use GPS in a similar way to automotive navigation system

Automotive navigation system

An automotive navigation system is a satellite navigation system designed for use in automobiles. It typically uses a GPS navigation device to acquire position data to locate the user on a road in the unit's map database. Using the road database, the unit can give directions to other locations...

s.
Alternative systems can be used with floor plan

Floor plan

In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan, or floorplan, is a diagram, usually to scale, showing a view from above of the relationships between rooms, spaces and other physical features at one level of a structure....

 instead of map

Map

A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....

s for indoor robots, combined with localization wireless hardware.