Interleaving Planning and Execution for Autonomous Robots develops a formal representation for interleaving planning and execution in the context of incomplete information. This work bridges the gap between theory and practice in robotics by presenting control architectures that are provably sound, complete and optimal, and then describing real-world implementations of these robot architectures. Dervish, winner of the 1994 AAAI National Robot Contest, is one of the robots featured. Interleaving Planning and Execution for Autonomous Robots is based on the author's PhD research, covering the same material taught in CS 224, the very popular Introduction to Robot Programming Laboratory taught at Stanford for four years by Professor Michael Genesereth and the author.
An agent is a system capable of perceiving the environment, reasoning with the percepts and then acting upon the world. Agents can be purely software systems, in which case their percepts and output `actions' are encoded binary strings. However, agents can also be realized in hardware, and then they are robots. The Artificial Intelligence community frequently views robots as embodied intelligent agents. The First International Conference on Autonomous Agents was held in Santa Monica, California, in February 1997. This conference brought together researchers from around the world with interests in agents, whether implemented purely in software or in hardware. The conference featured such topics as intelligent software agents, agents in virtual environments, agents in the entertainment industry, and robotic agents. Papers on robotic agents were selected for this volume. Autonomous Agents will be of interest to researchers and students in the area of artificial intelligence and robotics.
Fifty years ago, A. Turing predicted that by 2000 we would have a machine that could pass the Turing test. Although this may not yet be true, AI has advanced signi?cantly in these 50 years, and at the dawn of the XXI century is still an activeandchallenging?eld.Thisyearisalsosigni?cantforAIinMexico,withthe merging of the two major AI conferences into the biennial Mexican International Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (MICAI) series. MICAI is the union of the Mexican National AI Conference (RNIA) and the International AI Symposium (ISAI), organized annually by the Mexican Society forAI(SMIA,since1984)andbytheMonterreyInstituteofTechnology(ITESM, since1988),respectively.The?rstMexicanInternationalConferenceonArti?cial Intelligence, MICAI 2000, took place April 11-14, 2000, in the city of Acapulco, Mexico.ThisconferenceseekstopromoteresearchinAI,andcooperationamong Mexican researchers and their peers worldwide. We welcome you all. Over 163 papers from 17 di?erent countries were submitted for consideration to MICAI 2000. After reviewing them thoroughly, MICAI’s program committee, referees, and program chair accepted 60 papers for the international track. This volume contains the written version of the papers and invited talks presented at MICAI. We would like to acknowledge the support of the American Association for Arti?cial Intelligence (AAAI), and the International Joint Conference on Art- cial Intelligence (IJCAI). We are specially grateful for the warm hospitality and generosity o?ered by the Acapulco Institute of Technology.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th Ibero-American Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IBERAMIA 2002, held in Seville, Spain, in November 2002. The 97 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 345 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on knowledge representation and reasoning, machine learning, uncertainty and fuzzy systems, genetic algorithms, neural nets, distributed artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems, natural language processing, intelligent tutoring systems, control and real time, robotics, and computer vision.
The second edition of a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of mobile robotics, from algorithms to mechanisms. Mobile robots range from the Mars Pathfinder mission's teleoperated Sojourner to the cleaning robots in the Paris Metro. This text offers students and other interested readers an introduction to the fundamentals of mobile robotics, spanning the mechanical, motor, sensory, perceptual, and cognitive layers the field comprises. The text focuses on mobility itself, offering an overview of the mechanisms that allow a mobile robot to move through a real world environment to perform its tasks, including locomotion, sensing, localization, and motion planning. It synthesizes material from such fields as kinematics, control theory, signal analysis, computer vision, information theory, artificial intelligence, and probability theory. The book presents the techniques and technology that enable mobility in a series of interacting modules. Each chapter treats a different aspect of mobility, as the book moves from low-level to high-level details. It covers all aspects of mobile robotics, including software and hardware design considerations, related technologies, and algorithmic techniques. This second edition has been revised and updated throughout, with 130 pages of new material on such topics as locomotion, perception, localization, and planning and navigation. Problem sets have been added at the end of each chapter. Bringing together all aspects of mobile robotics into one volume, Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots can serve as a textbook or a working tool for beginning practitioners. Curriculum developed by Dr. Robert King, Colorado School of Mines, and Dr. James Conrad, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, to accompany the National Instruments LabVIEW Robotics Starter Kit, are available. Included are 13 (6 by Dr. King and 7 by Dr. Conrad) laboratory exercises for using the LabVIEW Robotics Starter Kit to teach mobile robotics concepts.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Cooperative Information Systems, CIA'99, held in Uppsala, Sweden in July/August 1999. The 16 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 46 submissions. Also included are ten invited contributions by leading experts. The volume is divided in sections on information discovery and management on the Internet; information agents on the Internet-prototypes systems and applications; communication and collaboration, mobile information agents; rational information agents for electronic business; service mediation and negotiation; and adaptive personal assistance.
The Intelligent Techniques for Planning presents a number of modern approaches to the area of automated planning. These approaches combine methods from classical planning such as the construction of graphs and the use of domain-independent heuristics with techniques from other areas of artificial intelligence. This book discuses, in detail, a number of state-of-the-art planning systems that utilize constraint satisfaction techniques in order to deal with time and resources, machine learning in order to utilize experience drawn from past runs, methods from knowledge systems for more expressive representation of knowledge and ideas from other areas such as Intelligent Agents. Apart from the thorough analysis and implementation details, each chapter of the book also provides extensive background information about its subject and presents and comments on similar approaches done in the past.
One of the fundamental requirements for the success of a robot task is the capability to handle interaction between manipulator and environment. The quantity that describes the state of interaction more effectively is the contact force at the manipulator's end effector. High values of contact force are generally undesirable since they may stress both the manipulator and the manipulated object; hence the need to seek for effective force control strategies. The book provides a theoretical and experimental treatment of robot interaction control. In the framework of model-based operational space control, stiffness control and impedance control are presented as the basic strategies for indirect force control; a key feature is the coverage of six-degree-of-freedom interaction tasks and manipulator kinematic redundancy. Then, direct force control strategies are presented which are obtained from motion control schemes suitably modified by the closure of an outer force regulation feedback loop. Finally, advanced force and position control strategies are presented which include passivity-based, adaptive and output feedback control schemes. Remarkably, all control schemes are experimentally tested on a setup consisting of a seven-joint industrial robot with open control architecture and force/torque sensor. The topic of robot force control is not treated in depth in robotics textbooks, in spite of its crucial importance for practical manipulation tasks. In the few books addressing this topic, the material is often limited to single-degree-of-freedom tasks. On the other hand, several results are available in the robotics literature but no dedicated monograph exists. The book is thus aimed at filling this gap by providing a theoretical and experimental treatment of robot force control.
Within the past twenty years, the field of robotics has been finding many areas of applications ranging from space to underwater explo rations. One of these areas which is slowly gaining popularity among the users group is the notion of service robotics. This book is an in vestigation and exploration of engineering principles in the design and development of mechanisms and robotic devices that can be used in the field of surgery. Specifically the results of this book can be used for designing tools for class of Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). Generally, Minimal Invasive Surgery (MIS), e. g. laparoscopic surgery, is performed by using long surgical tools, that are inserted through small incisions at the ports of entry to the body (e. g. abdominal wall) for reaching the surgical site. The main drawback of current designs of en doscopic tools is that they are not able to extend all the movements and sensory capabilities of the surgeon's hand to the surgical site. By im proving surgical procedures, training, and more practice, it is possible for surgeons to reduce completion time for each task and increase their level of skill. However, even in the best cases the level of performance of a surgeon in Minimally Invasive Surgery is still a fraction of the con ventional surgery. Any dramatically improvement is usually driven by introduction of new tools or systems that in turn bring totally new pro cedures and set of skills.
An introduction to the techniques and algorithms of the newest field in robotics. Probabilistic robotics is a new and growing area in robotics, concerned with perception and control in the face of uncertainty. Building on the field of mathematical statistics, probabilistic robotics endows robots with a new level of robustness in real-world situations. This book introduces the reader to a wealth of techniques and algorithms in the field. All algorithms are based on a single overarching mathematical foundation. Each chapter provides example implementations in pseudo code, detailed mathematical derivations, discussions from a practitioner's perspective, and extensive lists of exercises and class projects. The book's Web site, www.probabilistic-robotics.org, has additional material. The book is relevant for anyone involved in robotic software development and scientific research. It will also be of interest to applied statisticians and engineers dealing with real-world sensor data.
