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Mobile Robots : Inspiration to Implementation provides everything
you need to start building robots today. The authors of this hugely popular book have
updated it and crammed in even more insights on designing, constructing, and operating
simple wheeled robots—all within reach of novice robot designers. They address such
issues as computational hardware, sensors, mechanics, motors, power, programming, and
design principles.
Mobile Robots : Inspiration to Implementation
 Start
with a simple non-microprocessor robot and work your way up to a fully intelligent
machine. Readers can construct a simple critter called Tutebot, a more
sophisticated fellow named Rug Warrior, or his highly evolved cousin, Rug
Warrior Pro. The authors encourage you to experiment with your own innovations, add
on your own features, and devise new tasks.
The authors keep the book fresh with three completely new chapters. The first describes
a number of engaging projects suitable for Rug Warrior. Another new chapter presents the
latest attempts to build "real" robots, while the third contains the pooled
advice of the authors regarding design principles. The revised edition also includes
numerous simple and easily understood programs, contacts for suppliers and products, full
schematics, and a directory of robot contests. |
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Excerpt:
Chapter 1: Introduction
The rise in popularity of the single-chip microcomputer and the drastic reductions in size
and cost of integrated circuits in recent years have opened up huge new arenas for
creating intelligent systems. Building a robot, however, requires more expertise than
simple programming. A roboticist must be a generalist. The robot designer must own a
compendium of basic skills from fields such as mechanical engineering, electrical
engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence (AI). Unfortunately, few people
have the opportunity to study so broadly. In this book, we attempt to outline a few basic
ideas from each of those areas and, more importantly, to suggest strategies for putting
the pieces together. Hopefully, with a little creativity, you will be able to later use
this toolbox of techniques to design far more intriguing machines than those outlined in
this book.
Robotics is about building systems. Locomotion actuators, manipulators, control
systems, sensor suites, efficient power supplies, well-engineered software -- all of these
subsystems have to be designed to fit together into an appropriate package suitable for
carrying out the robot's task. Where do we start?
We think of a robot as an intelligent connection of perception to action. The
implementation of that goal might take on a variety of "costumes," from
mechanical logic to microprocessor control to networks of neuron-like gates. Our approach
is to create abstraction barriers in terms of thinking about the intelligent capabilities
our robot might possess and then to gradually break them down by explaining the specific
hardware details that we might employ to create those competences. The theme throughout is
to build systems early and build systems often -- to start with very simple systems that
connect perception to action and to gradually move to more sophisticated machines.
We start with a tutorial in the next chapter that describes how to build a robot, TuteBot,
that is able to wander around a room and avoid obstacles. This example robot, pictured in
Figure 1.1, is implemented without recourse to a microprocessor. TuteBot is merely an
agglomeration of switches, relays, motors, and discrete electronic components, all of
which can be assembled rather easily. You will be able to adjust TuteBot's reflexes by
tweaking two potentiometers.
From this very simple example of a robot, we introduce the microprocessor and the
advantages of using software to manage the complexity of large numbers of sensors and
actuators. The viewpoint from this moment on is to build systems with the intent of
getting to software as soon as possible. To keep parts count, size, and costs down for our
readers, we describe minimalist ways to interface sensors, motors, and power supplies in
another example robot, Rug Warrior. The microprocessor becomes the heart of Rug Warrior,
and the following chapters describe the workings of mechanical and electrical components
and the interface circuitry that enables them to be driven from a microprocessor.
Software-primitive operations are threaded throughout the book as each new perception or
locomotion system is introduced.
Although this book describes the details involved in actually building robots, we hope
also to raise some deeper points about models of intelligence. What is intelligence? Is it
the contemplative thought involved in playing chess? Is it the reflexive action that
occurs as you try to keep the gnats out of your eyes while walking down the street on a
hot, muggy summer night? Or is it the common-sense reasoning used in deciding what to make
for breakfast? We will stick with the notion that intelligence is the foundation for how
people act most of the time. It will be interesting to keep some of these questions in
mind as we investigate the sorts of mechanisms we can use to endow our example robots with
low-level behaviors.
Other features of intelligence have to do with the role the environment plays in our view
of cleverness. How connected are sensing and actuation to intelligence? How much of what
we acknowledge as complex behavior is merely a reflection of simple behaviors off of a
complex environment? For instance, if we observe the behavior of ants scurrying around
their anthills, we might begin to wonder whether their complex paths result from careful
planning and deep contemplation, or perhaps merely from simple rules of behavior acted out
in an environment full of uneven terrain, obstacles to climb over and other ants.
TuteBot and Rug Warrior will not answer many of these questions pertaining to the
structure of intelligence, but we hope that they can be the platforms for an inexpensive,
easily attainable AI input/output device -- a collection of sensors and actuators that
provide a little bit of input, a little bit of output, and a little bit of computation to
readers interested in experimenting with some of these issues.
Many of the modern theories in artificial intelligence grew from work in a number of other
fields. Cybernetics, in the 1940s and 1950s, was a field of research that tried to
understand intelligence through the study of the control of machines. Cybernetics
developed in parallel with classical control theory. Its model of computation was analog,
and it tried also to understand intelligence in animals by modeling them as machines. Our
example of TuteBot is very much in the same spirit as the early work in cybernetics.
For instance, Figure 1.2 illustrates the extent of TuteBot's talents. The long dashed
lines at the bottom of the figure exemplify one initial behavior, where TuteBot moves
forward in a straight line until it hits an obstacle. It then backs up, turning left for
some period, and then proceeds forward again in a straight-line motion.
A number of mechanisms could be imagined necessary to achieve this behavior. We could
suggest contemplative recognition of chair legs and walls and TuteBot making explicit
decisions concerning when to back up and how far to turn, but TuteBot has no such model of
the world. Instead, TuteBot has a simple analog electrical circuit for a control system,
which directs TuteBot's two wheels to move it forward until a bump sensor on the front
detects a collision. The signal from the bump sensor directs both motors to reverse
direction, and TuteBot then backs up. What makes it turn is an element of state, or
timing, in the system that is implemented with a resistor-capacitor (RC) circuit, one for
each wheel. If the RC circuit on each wheel is set differently, one wheel will back up for
a longer period of time than the other wheel, causing TuteBot to turn. When TuteBot
resumes forward motion, it no longer has the same heading and so avoids ramming the
obstacle it first bumped.
A second behavior can be added to TuteBot using a similar strategy...
Table of Contents:
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: TuteBot
Chapter 3: Computational Hardware
Chapter 4: Designing and Prototyping
Chapter 5: Sensors
Chapter 6: Mechanics
Chapter 7: Motors
Chapter 8: Power
Chapter 9: Robot Programming
Chapter 10: Robot Projects
Chapter 11: Robot Applications
Chapter 12: Robot Design Principles
Chapter 13: Unsolved Problems
Appendix A: Schematics
Appendix B: Rug Warrior Programs
Appendix C: Yellow Pages
Appendix D: Trade Magazines
Appendix E: Data Books
Appendix F: Robot Contests
Appendix G: Color and ASCII Codes
Bibliography
Index
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