1. Today: Classic & AI Control Wednesday: Image Processing/Vision
Intelligent Robotics
Today: Classic & AI Control
Wednesday: Image Processing/Vision
CoWorker by iRobot Corporation

2. 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)

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Reactive/Behavior-Based Control
Sense
Act
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)

9. Behavior Coordination
If multiple behaviors are possible which one does the robot do?

10. 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.

11. Hybrid Paradigm Combines Reactive and Deliberative Control Planner Act
Sense
Act

12. Spectrum of AI Robot Control