Introduction

Question 1

3 key questions in mobile robotics

Answer 1

1. Where am I?
2. Where am I going?
3. 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

Question 2

Why robots?

Answer 2

4 reasons:
* replace the human
* project the human into a remote env
* assist the human
* amuse

Question 3

7 areas of AI related to robotics

Answer 3

1. knowledge representation: symbolic world representation
2. natural language processing
3. learning
4. planning and problem solving
5. inference: generating answers when incomplete informations
6. search
7. vision

Question 4

The 3 functionalities of an intelligent robot (always them…)

Answer 4

• Reactive Functionality: sensing, locomotion, reactive behaviours
• Deliberative Functionality: navigation, localization and mapping, path planning
• Interactive Functionality: human-robot interaction, human-robot interfaces

Question 5

3 general robotics paradigms

Answer 5

1. Classical AI paradigm
2. Intelligent robotics paradigm
3. Collaborative robotics paradigm

Question 6

Classical AI paradigm

Answer 6

SENSE-PLAN-ACT

• discrete paradigm
• uses a perfect model
• not a suitable paradigm (it does not adapt)
• e.g. can be used for chess

Question 7

Intelligent robotics paradigm

Answer 7

1. Perception
2. Reasoning
3. Action
4. Repeat from 1

• Continuous paradigm
• Approximate model
• Vacuum cleaner

Question 8

Collaborative robotics paradigm

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What is a robot?

Answer 9

• 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).

Question 10

Fundamental elements of a robot

Answer 10

• Sensors
• Information processors
• Actuators

They all communicate between each other.

Question 11

What is an intelligent robot?

Answer 11

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.