Robot Behaviour (eBook)

Written to complement and build on Nehmzow's earlier book: Scientific Methods in Mobile Robotics this new book is practical in its approach and includes examples of modelling and analysing observed behaviour based on real-world robotics scenarios.



Robots have been changing our lives for some decades now, and will become even more important in the future. The scientific and industrial community have used them extensively in the past to investigate theoretical concepts of cognition, machine intelligence, theories of behavioural mechanisms in living beings, to manipulate and transport objects, or for inspection and exploration tasks. Increasingly, however, robots are also becoming relevant components of political life: industrialised nations are investing large amounts of money into research of care for the elderly, using robots, or for healthcare applications. Entertainment robots occupy a small niche at the moment, but this will increase, and so too will the use of robots in military applications.

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Robots have evolved impressively since the 3-D manipulator built by C.W. K- ward (1957), the two little electromechanical turtles Elmer and Elsie [Walter, 1950, Walter, 1951], and the ?rst mobile robots controlled by comp- ers, Shakey [Nilsson, 1984], CART [Moravec, 1979, Moravec, 1983], and - lare [Giralt et al., 1979]. Since then, we have seen industrial robot manipu- tors working in car factories, automatic guided vehicles moving heavy loads along pre-de?ned routes, human-remotely-operated robots neutralising bombs, and even semi-autonomous robots, like Sojourner, going to Mars and moving from one position to another commanded from Earth. Robots will go further and further in our society. However, there is still a kind of robot that has not completely taken off so far: autonomous robots. Autonomy depends upon working without human supervision for a considerable amount of time, taking independent decisions, adapting to new challenges in dynamic environments, interacting with other systems and humans, and so on. Research on autonomy is highly motivated by the expectations of having robots that can work with us and for us in everyday environments, assisting us at home or work, acting as servants and companions to help us in the execution of different tasks, so that we can have more spare time and a better quality of life.