1. Autonomous navigation apparatus for a mobile vehicle arranged to move within an environment that is delimited, at least in part, by a boundary, said apparatus comprising, in combination: (a) a plurality of sensors arranged on said vehicle and adapted to determine the distance from said vehicle to said boundary, each sensor being operative to determine said distance in a prescribed direction, with respect to said vehicle, which is different from the direction of at least one other sensor; (b) a neural network comprising an input layer coupled to said sensors, at least one hidden layer coupled to said input layer and an output layer coupled to one of said hidden layers for producing a first output representing an identification of the spacial position of said vehicle; and at least one patch location within said environment for training said neural network to produce a correct first output in response to the distance from said vehicle to said boundary determined by said plurality of sensors and the actual position of said vehicle at the at least one patch location.