The Robot Revolution has been Postponed (until we can debug the sensors) Bill Smart Oregon State University

What’s Hard in Robotics?

Sense-Think-Act

Sense: Sensors

Sensors are... noisy wrong late

Sensors Measure the Wrong Thing hopefully its correlated with the right thing assumptions, assumptions, assumptions

The Sad Truth all sensors are terrible

Example Sensors LIDAR cameras kinect-like sensors

LIDAR

shoots laser light into the world measures return intensity what does it measure? noisy, wrong, and late

Cameras

detects light reflected from things in the world on an array of silicon what does it measure? noisy, wrong, and late

Cameras

Kinect-like Sensors

Stereo Vision

Kinect-like Sensors

[video]

Remember all sensors are terrible noisy, wrong, and late sensors don’t measure what you want

Think: Computation and AI

Think build a model of the world from your sensor data figure out what to do to get you to the state of the world you want implemented in software everything boils down to specific numbers

Interpreting Sensor Data

you have to write code input: (r, g, b) values for each pixel output: something you care about

A Simple Example turn on a light when someone is 1m from a LIDAR sensor

Another Example: Face Detection

Face Detection Viola-Jones algorithm Haar cascade

Set of Pixel Values that Often Correlate Well with the Presence of Faces in the Training Data that You Collected Detector Works great when it works Fails strangely when it fails

Figuring Out What To Do map every state of the world to an action in software

A Simple Example stop the robot 1m from the wall LIDAR sensor

Sensor Filters stabilize the readings introduce lag and bias

Implementing it in Software you have to pin down everything specific numbers if then you can’t test it all

Act: Actuator Technology

Moving About

Picking things Up

What Else is Hard?

Interacting with humans subtle and quick to anger Power everything boils down to battery life A bunch of other technical stuff

How to Watch a Robot Video

Folding Towels

Crazy Quadcopters

Final Thoughts a long way from the lab to the world easy for us usually means hard for robots the best way to understand modern robots is to use one and try to program it I understand law and policy less than you understand robots (so we should talk, over a beer)