Sensor Based Intelligent Robots

Rapid advances in sensors, computers, and algorithms continue to fuel dramatic improvements in intelligent robots. In addition, robot vehicles are starting to appear in a number of applications. For example, they have been installed in public settings to perform such tasks as delivering items in hospitals and cleaning floors in supermarkets; recently, two small robot vehicles were launched to explore Mars.This book presents the latest advances in the principal fields that contribute to robotics. It contains contributions written by leading experts addressing topics such as Path and Motion Planning, Navigation and Sensing, Vision and Object Recognition, Environment Modeling, and others.

This book constitutes the thorougly refereed post-proceedings of an international workshop on sensor based Intelligent Robot held in Dagstuhl Castle, Germany in September/October 1998. The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed for inclusion in the book. Among the topics addressed are robot navigation, motion planning, autonomous mobile robots, wheelchair robots, interactive robots, car navigation systems, visual tracking, sensor based navigation, distributed algorithms, computer vision, intelligent agents, robot control, and computational geometry.

This edited and reviewed volume consists of papers that were originally presented at a workshop in the Scientific Center at Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany. It gives an overview of the field and presents the latest developments in the areas of modeling and planning for sensor based robots. The particular topics addressed include active vision, sensor fusion, environment modeling, motion planning, robot navigation, distributed control architectures, reactive behavior, and others.

Robotics is a highly interdisciplinary research topic, that requires integration of methods for mechanics, control engineering, signal processing, planning, gra- ics, human-computer interaction, real-time systems, applied mathematics, and software engineering to enable construction of fully operational systems. The diversity of topics needed to design, implement, and deploy such systems implies that it is almost impossible for individual teams to provide the needed critical mass for such endeavors. To facilitate interaction and progress on sensor-based intelligent robotics inter-disciplinary workshops are necessary through which - depthdiscussioncanbeusedforcrossdisseminationbetweendi?erentdisciplines. The Dagstuhl foundation has organized a number of workshops on Mod- ing and Integration of Sensor Based Intelligent Robot Systems. The Dagstuhl seminars take place over a full week in a beautiful setting in the Saarland in Germany. The setting provides an ideal environment for in-depth presentations and rich interaction between the participants. This volume contains papers presented during the fourth workshop held - tober 15–20, 2000. All papers were submitted by workshop attendees, and were reviewed by at least one reviewer. We wish to thank all of the reviewers for their invaluable help in making this a high-quality selection of papers. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Schloss Dagstuhl Foundation and the sta? at Springer-Verlag. Without their support the production of this volume would not have been possible.

The 24 chapters in this book provides a deep overview of robotics and the application of AI and IoT in robotics. It contains the exploration of AI and IoT based intelligent automation in robotics. The various algorithms and frameworks for robotics based on AI and IoT are presented, analyzed, and discussed. This book also provides insights on application of robotics in education, healthcare, defense and many other fields which utilize IoT and AI. It also introduces the idea of smart cities using robotics.

Most industrial robots today have little or no sensory capability. Feedback is limited to information about joint positions, combined with a few interlock and timing signals. These robots can function only in an environment where the objects to be manipulated are precisely located in the proper position for the robot to grasp (i. e. , in a structured environment). For many present industrial applications, this level of performance has been adequate. With the increasing demand for high performance sensor-based robot manipulators in assembly tasks, meeting this demand and challenge can only be achieved through the consideration of: 1) efficient acquisition and processing of intemaVextemal sensory information, 2) utilization and integration of sensory information from various sensors (tactile, force, and vision) to acquire knowledge in a changing environment, 3) exploitation of inherent robotic parallel algorithms and efficient VLSI architectures for robotic computations, and finally 4) system integration into a working and functioning robotic system. This is the intent of the Workshop on Sensor-Based Robots: Algorithms and Architectures - to study the fundamental research issues and problems associated with sensor-based robot manipulators and to propose approaches and solutions from various viewpoints in improving present day robot manipula tors in the areas of sensor fusion and integration, sensory information processing, and parallel algorithms and architectures for robotic computations.

Since the late 1960s, there has been a revolution in robots and industrial automation, from the design of robots with no computing or sensorycapabilities (first-generation), to the design of robots with limited computational power and feedback capabilities (second-generation), and the design of intelligent robots (third-generation), which possess diverse sensing and decision making capabilities. The development of the theory of intelligent machines has been developed in parallel to the advances in robot design. This theory is the natural outcome of research and development in classical control (1950s), adaptive and learning control (1960s), self-organizing control (1970s) and intelligent control systems (1980s). The theory of intelligent machines involves utilization and integration of concepts and ideas from the diverse disciplines of science, engineering and mathematics, and fields like artificial intelligence, system theory and operations research. The main focus and motivation is to bridge the gap between diverse disciplines involved and bring under a common cover several generic methodologies pertaining to what has been defined as machine intelligence. Intelligent robotic systems are a specific application of intelligent machines. They are complex computer controlled robotic systems equipped with a diverse set of visual and non visual sensors and possess decision making and problem solving capabilities within their domain of operation. Their modeling and control is accomplished via analytical and heuristic methodologies and techniques pertaining to generalized system theory and artificial intelligence. Intelligent Robotic Systems: Theory, Design and Applications, presents and justifies the fundamental concepts and ideas associated with the modeling and analysis of intelligent robotic systems. Appropriate for researchers and engineers in the general area of robotics and automation, Intelligent Robotic Systems is both a solid reference as well as a text for a graduate level course in intelligent robotics/machines.

Mobile Robotics: A Practical Introduction (2nd edition) is an excellent introduction to the foundations and methods used for designing completely autonomous mobile robots. A fascinating, cutting-edge, research topic, autonomous mobile robotics is now taught in more and more universities. In this book you are introduced to the fundamental concepts of this complex field via twelve detailed case studies that show how to build and program real working robots. Topics covered in clued learning, autonomous navigation in unmodified, noisy and unpredictable environments, and high fidelity robot simulation. This new edition has been updated to include a new chapter on novelty detection, and provides a very practical introduction to mobile robotics for a general scientific audience. It is essential reading for 2nd and 3rd year undergraduate students and postgraduate students studying robotics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and robot engineering. The update and overview of core concepts in mobile robotics will assist and encourage practitioners of the field and set challenges to explore new avenues of research in this exiting field. The author is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Essex. "A very fine overview over the relevant problems to be solved in the attempt to bring intelligence to a moving vehicle." Professor Dr. Ewald von Puttkamer, University of Kaiserslautern "Case studies show ways of achieving an impressive repertoire of kinds of learned behaviour, navigation and map-building. The book is an admirable introduction to this modern approach to mobile robotics and certainly gives a great deal of food for thought. This is an important and though-provoking book." Alex M. Andrew in Kybernetes Vol 29 No 4 and Robotica Vol 18