08-05-2012, 05:33 PM
Artificial Intelligence – An Introduction to Robotics
AI-Robotics abstract.PDF (Size: 1.3 MB / Downloads: 115)
Introduction
Capek and his Robots
The term "Robot" can be traced back to Karel Capek’s play "R.U.R. Rossum’s universal robots" (in 1921)
that comes from the Czech word for "corvee".
A brief History of Robots
Robotics are based on two enabling technologies: Telemanipulators and the ability of numerical control of
machines.
Telemanipulators are remotely controlled machines which usually consist of an arm and a gripper. The
movements of arm and gripper follow the instructions the human gives through his control device. First
telemanipulators have been used to deal with radio-active material.
Numeric control allows to control machines very precisely in relation to a given coordinate system. It
was first used in 1952 at the MIT and lead to the first programming language for machines (called APT:
Automatic Programmed Tools).
The combination of both of these techniques lead to the first programmable telemanipulator. The first
industrial robot using these principle was installed in 1961. These are the robots one knows from industrial
facilities like car construction plants.
The development of mobile robots was driven by the desire to automate transportation in production
processes and autonomous transport systems. The former lead to driver-less transport systems used on
factory floors to move objects to different points in the production process in the late seventies. New forms
of mobile robots have been constructed lately like insectoid robots with many legs modeled after examples
nature gave us or autonomous robots for underwater usage.
Since a few years wheel-driven robots are commercially marketed and used for services like "Get and
Bring" (for example in hospitals).
Humanoid robots are being developed since 1975 when Wabot-I was presented in Japan. The current
Wabot-III already has some minor cognitive capabilities. Another humanoid robot is "Cog", developed in
the MIT-AI-Lab since 1994. Honda’s humanoid robot became well known in the public when presented
back in 1999. Although it is remote controlled by humans it can walk autonomously (on the floor and
stairs).
In science fiction robots are already human’s best friend but in reality we will only see robots for specific
jobs as universal programmable machine slave in the near future (which leads to interesting questions, see
[17]).
Definition: What is a Robot?
Robots are physical agents that perform tasks by manipulating the physical world. They are equipped with
sensors to perceive their environment and effectors to assert physical forces on it (covered in more detail
in next section). As mentioned before Robots can be put into three main categories: manipulators, mobile
robots and humanoid robots.
Robotics and AI
Artificial intelligence is a theory. The base object is the agent who is the "actor". It is realized in software.
Robots are manufactured as hardware. The connection between those two is that the control of the robot is
a software agent that reads data from the sensors, decides what to do next and then directs the effectors to
act in the physical world.
Theory and Application
Robot Hardware
Sensors
Sensors are the perceptual interface between robots and
Figure 1: Laser Range Scanner
their environment. 1 On the one hand we have passive sensors
like cameras, which capture signals that are generated
by other sources in the environment. On the other hand we
have active sensors (for example sonar, radar, laser) which
emit energy into the environment. This energy is reflected
by objects in the environment. These reflections can then
be used to gather the information needed.
Generally active sensors provide more information than passive
sensors. But they also consume more power. This can
lead to a problem on mobile robots which need to take their
energy with them in batteries.