Intelligent Robotics

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Intelligent Robotics

• Today Classic AI Control
• Wednesday Image Processing/Vision

CoWorker by iRobot Corporation
http//www.irobot.com/industrial/coworker.asp
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Robot Movement, Sensing, Reasoning

• What will it manipulate? How will it move? (ME)
• What situations does it need to sense? (Sensor
  Suite) (ECE)
• How does it decide what actions to take? (CS)

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What does it take to get an intelligent robot to
do a simple task?
Robot Parts Two Arms, Vision, and Brain The
Brain can communicate with all parts Arms can
take commands as left, right, up, down, forward,
and backward Arms can answer yes/no about whether
they are touching something but cannot
distinguish what they are touching The vision
system can answer any question the brain asks,
but cannot volunteer information. The vision
system can move around to get a better view.
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Why is this simple task so difficult?

• Coordination is difficult
• Indirect feedback
• Updating knowledge about the environment
• Unexpected events
• Need to re-plan
• Different coordinate systems need to be resolved
• Box-centered and arm-centered

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The Real World is A Harsh Place

• Inaccessible
• near by stimuli, limited attention, imperfect
  sensors
• Non-deterministic
• Robot structure and dynamics, environment
• Dynamic
• Changes happening as decisions are made
• Continuous
• The worlds is not a set of discrete events

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Dealing with the Physical World

• A robot needs to be able to handle its
  environment or the environment must be altered
  and controlled.
• Close World Assumption
• The robot knows everything relevant to performing
  it task Complete World Model
• no surprises
• Open World Assumption
• The robot does not assume complete knowledge
• The robot must be able to handle unexpected
  events.

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Deliberative/Hierarchical Robot Control

• Emphasizes Planning

• Robot senses the world, constructs a model
  representation of the world, shuts its eyes,
  creates a plan of action, makes the action, then
  senses the results of the action.

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Reactive/Behavior-Based Control

• Ignores world models
• The world is its own best model
• Tightly couples perceptions to actions
• No intervening abstract representations
• Primitive Behaviors are used as building blocks
• Individual behaviors can be made up of primitive
  behaviors
• Reactive no memory
• Behavior-Based Short Term Memory (STM)

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Behavior Coordination

• If multiple behaviors are possible which one does
  the robot do?

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Where does the overall robot behavior come from?

• No planning, goal is generally not explicit
• Emergent Behavior
• Overall behavior is a result of robots
  interaction with its surroundings and the
  coordination between the individual behaviors.
• Emergence is the appearance of a novel property
  of a whole system that cannot be explained by
  examining the individual components, for example
  the wetness of water.

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Hybrid Paradigm

• Combines Reactive and Deliberative Control

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Spectrum of AI Robot Control