Robotics

Chapter 25

Chapter 25 1
 Outline
Robots, Effectors, and Sensors
Localization and Mapping
Motion Planning
Motor Control

Chapter 25 2
Mobile Robots

Chapter 25 3
 Manipulators
P
R R

R R

Configuration of robot specified by 6 numbers

⇒ 6 degrees of freedom (DOF)
6 is the minimum number required to position end-effector arbitrarily.
For dynamical systems, add velocity for each DOF.

Chapter 25 4
 Non-holonomic robots

θ
(x, y)

A car has more DOF (3) than controls (2), so is non-holonomic;

cannot generally transition between two infinitesimally close configurations

Chapter 25 5
 Sensors
Range finders: sonar (land, underwater), laser range finder, radar (aircraft),
tactile sensors, GPS

Imaging sensors: cameras (visual, infrared)

Proprioceptive sensors: shaft decoders (joints, wheels), inertial sensors,
force sensors, torque sensors

Chapter 25 6
 Localization—Where Am I?
Compute current location and orientation (pose) given observations:

At−2 At−1 At

Xt−1 Xt Xt+1

Zt−1 Zt Zt+1

Chapter 25 7
 Localization contd.

ω t ∆t
xi, yi

θt+1
h(xt)
vt ∆t Z1 Z2 Z3 Z4
xt+1

θt

xt

Assume Gaussian noise in motion prediction, sensor range measurements

Chapter 25 8
 Localization contd.
Can use particle filtering to produce approximate position estimate

Robot position

Robot position
Robot position

Chapter 25 9
 Localization contd.
Can also use extended Kalman filter for simple cases:
robot

landmark

Assumes that landmarks are identifiable—otherwise, posterior is multimodal

Chapter 25 10
 Mapping
Localization: given map and observed landmarks, update pose distribution
Mapping: given pose and observed landmarks, update map distribution
SLAM: given observed landmarks, update pose and map distribution
Probabilistic formulation of SLAM:
add landmark locations L1, . . . , Lk to the state vector,
proceed as for localization

Chapter 25 11
Mapping contd.

Chapter 25 12
3D Mapping example

Chapter 25 13
 Motion Planning
Idea: plan in configuration space defined by the robot’s DOFs

conf-2

conf-1
conf-3

conf-3
conf-1
conf-2
w elb

w shou

Solution is a point trajectory in free C-space

Chapter 25 14
 Configuration space planning

Basic problem: ∞d states! Convert to finite state space.

Cell decomposition:
divide up space into simple cells,
each of which can be traversed “easily” (e.g., convex)
Skeletonization:
identify finite number of easily connected points/lines
that form a graph such that any two points are connected
by a path on the graph

Chapter 25 15
 Cell decomposition example

goal

start

goal
start

Problem: may be no path in pure freespace cells

Solution: recursive decomposition of mixed (free+obstacle) cells

Chapter 25 16
 Skeletonization: Voronoi diagram
Voronoi diagram: locus of points equidistant from obstacles

Problem: doesn’t scale well to higher dimensions

Chapter 25 17
 Skeletonization: Probabilistic Roadmap
A probabilistic roadmap is generated by generating random points in C-space
and keeping those in freespace; create graph by joining pairs by straight lines

Problem: need to generate enough points to ensure that every start/goal

pair is connected through the graph

Chapter 25 18
 Motor control
Can view the motor control problem as a search problem
in the dynamic rather than kinematic state space:
– state space defined by x1, x2, . . . , x˙1, x˙2, . . .
– continuous, high-dimensional (Sarcos humanoid: 162 dimensions)
Deterministic control: many problems are exactly solvable
esp. if linear, low-dimensional, exactly known, observable
Simple regulatory control laws are effective for specified motions
Stochastic optimal control: very few problems exactly solvable
⇒ approximate/adaptive methods

Chapter 25 19
 Biological motor control
Motor control systems are characterized by massive redundancy
Infinitely many trajectories achieve any given task
E.g., 3-link arm moving in plane throwing at a target
simple 12-parameter controller, one degree of freedom at target
11-dimensional continuous space of optimal controllers
Idea: if the arm is noisy, only “one” optimal policy minimizes error at target
I.e., noise-tolerance might explain actual motor behaviour
Harris & Wolpert (Nature, 1998): signal-dependent noise
explains eye saccade velocity profile perfectly

Chapter 25 20
 Setup
Suppose a controller has “intended” control parameters θ0
which are corrupted by noise, giving θ drawn from Pθ0
Output (e.g., distance from target) y = F (θ);
y

Chapter 25 21
 Simple learning algorithm: Stochastic gradient
Minimize Eθ [y 2] by gradient descent:
Z
∇θ0 Eθ [y ] = ∇θ0 Pθ0 (θ)F (θ)2dθ
2

Z ∇ P (θ)
θ0 θ0
= F (θ)2Pθ0 (θ)dθ
Pθ0 (θ)
∇θ Pθ (θ)
= Eθ [ 0 0 y 2 ]
Pθ0 (θ)
Given samples (θj , yj ), j = 1, . . . , N , we have
1 N ∇θ0 Pθ0 (θj ) 2
∇θ0 Eˆθ [y 2] =
X
yj
N j=1 Pθ0 (θj )

For Gaussian noise with covariance Σ, i.e., Pθ0 (θ) = N (θ0, Σ), we obtain

ˆ 1 N
X
∇θ0 Eθ [y ] =
2 Σ−1(θj − θ0)yj2
N j=1

Chapter 25 22
 What the algorithm is doing

x x
x x
x x x x x
x x x
x x x xx x x
x x x x x
x x x x xx
x x x
x x x x
x xx x x x

Chapter 25 23
 Results for 2–D controller

10

8
Velocity v

4
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Angle phi

Chapter 25 24
 Results for 2–D controller

4.61
4.6
4.59
4.58
Velocity v

4.57
4.56
4.55
4.54
4.53
4.52
4.51
0.6 0.61 0.62 0.63 0.64 0.65
Angle phi

Chapter 25 25
 Results for 2–D controller

0.0095
0.009
0.0085
0.008
E(y^2)

0.0075
0.007
0.0065
0.006
0.0055
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000
Step

Chapter 25 26
 Summary
The rubber hits the road
Mobile robots and manipulators
Degrees of freedom to define robot configuration
Localization and mapping as probabilistic inference problems
(require good sensor and motion models)
Motion planning in configuration space
requires some method for finitization

Chapter 25 27