3 key questions in mobile robotics
- Where am I?
- Where am I going?
- How do I get there?
To answer these questions the robot has to:
- Have a model of the environment (given or autonomously built)
- Find its position within the environment
- Perceive and analyze the environment
- Plan and execute the movement
Why robots?
4 reasons:
* replace the human
* project the human into a remote env
* assist the human
* amuse
7 areas of AI related to robotics
- knowledge representation: symbolic world representation
- natural language processing
- learning
- planning and problem solving
- inference: generating answers when incomplete informations
- search
- vision
The 3 functionalities of an intelligent robot (always them…)
- Reactive Functionality: sensing, locomotion, reactive behaviours
- Deliberative Functionality: navigation, localization and mapping, path planning
- Interactive Functionality: human-robot interaction, human-robot interfaces
3 general robotics paradigms
- Classical AI paradigm
- Intelligent robotics paradigm
- Collaborative robotics paradigm
Classical AI paradigm
SENSE-PLAN-ACT
- discrete paradigm
- uses a perfect model
- not a suitable paradigm (it does not adapt)
- e.g. can be used for chess
Intelligent robotics paradigm
- Perception
- Reasoning
- Action
- Repeat from 1
- Continuous paradigm
- Approximate model
- Vacuum cleaner
Collaborative robotics paradigm
Depending on the task we need to define:
?. Perception (sense)
?. Control software (plan)
?. Action (act)
?. Environment
?. Human (unpredictable)
- just execute commands or interpret them?
- shared-autonomy approach
What is a robot?
- Standard ISO 8373:2012:
A robot is an actuated mechanism programmable in two or more axes with a certain degree of autonomy, moving within its environment, to perform intended tasks. - Historic definition:
The word “robot” comes from the Czech proper name “Robot”, in turn coming from “robota” (hard work), with which the playwriter K. Čapek called the “automatons” (i.e. artificial creatures) working in place of the human workers in his sci-fi theatre play R.U.R. (1920).
Fundamental elements of a robot
- Sensors
- Information processors
- Actuators
They all communicate between each other.
What is an intelligent robot?
Is a physically situated intelligent agent; it is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success.
An intelligent robot is also called autonomous, where autonomous means autonomous capability.
