Artificial Intelligence

versus classical
Robotics
All robot control architectures are build on some ideas
of Artificial
RobotIntelligence
control architectures
They form also, what the AI considered now, in
contrast to classical AI
AL is the best example
 Is AI Engineering or Science?
Is Robotics Engineering or
Science?
 Construction ==> Engineering
 all scientific problems solved
 representative: Feigenbaum

 Science
 more scientific principles to be discoverer
 representative: McCarthy
 What is a robot? More
definitions….
 An intelligent robot is a machine able to extract
information from its environment and use knowledge
about its world to move safely in a meaningful and
purposeful manner.
 A robot is a system which exists in the physical world
and autonomously senses its environment and acts in it.
 Robotics is the intelligent connection of perception to
action (M. Brady)
 •How these definitions relate to AI?
•Compare to classical robot definitions.

 Alternative terms we will use:

 UAV: unmanned aerial vehicle
 UGV: unmanned ground vehicle
 UUV: unmanned undersea vehicle
 What makes a robot?
 sensors
 effectors/actuators
 locomotion system
 on-board computer system
 controllers for all of the above (smart methods everywhere)
 Sensing:
 What can be sensed?
 depends on the sensors on the robot
 the robot exists in its sensor space (i.e., all
possible values of its sensory readings, also called
perceptual space)
 robotic sensors are very different from biological
sensors;
 a designer needs to put his mind into the robot's sensor
space
 a roboticist has to try to imagine the world in the
robot’s sensor space
 What needs to be sensed?
 depends on the robot's task
State: a sufficient description of the system
 observable: the robot knows its state at all times
 hidden/inaccessible/unobservable: the robot does not
know its state
 partially-observable: the robot knows some part of its
state
 discrete (e.g., up, down, blue, red) or continuous (e.g., 3.765
mph)
 State space: all the states a system can be in
 External state: state of the world
 night/day, raining/sunny, at home, etc.
 sensed using the robot's sensors
 Internal state: state of the robot
 happy/sad, stalled/moving, battery level, velocity, etc.
 can be sensed (e.g., velocity)
 can be stored/remembered (e.g., happy/sad)
 The robot's state is a combination of its external and internal state.
 How intelligent the robot appears will strongly depend on how much
and quickly it can sense its environment and itself.
 We will talk more about sensors in next lectures.
 Internal state can be used to remember information about the world
(e.g., remember paths to the goal, remember maps, remember friends
versus enemies, etc.)
 This is called a representation or an internal model.
 Representations/models have a lot to do with how complex a controller is!
 Acting:
 A robot acts through the use of its actuators, also
called effectors
 Robotic actuators are very different from
biological ones, both are used for:
 locomotion (moving around, going places)
 manipulation (handling objects)
 This divides robotics into three areas:
 mobile robotics
 manipulator robotics
 communication robotics (theatre, toys)
 Acting:
 Action versus Behavior :
 Behavior is what an external observer sees a robot doing.
 Robots are programmed to display desired behavior.
 Behavior is a result of a sequence of robot actions.
 Observing behavior may not tell us much about the internal control of a robot.
 Control can be a black box.
 Mobile robots can move around, using wheels, tracks, or legs, and
usually move in 2-dimensions.
 However, swimming and flying robots are also mobile robots, and they move in
3-dimensions (and are therefore even harder to control)
 Manipulators are various robot arms;
 they can move in 1 or more dimensions.
 the number of dimensions are called the robot's degrees of freedom (DOF).
 we will learn much more about actuators/effectors later.
 Autonomy:
 What is autonomy?
 the ability to make one's own decisions and act on them
 for robots, the ability to sense the situation and act on it
appropriately
 Autonomy can be complete, as in autonomous robots, or
partial, as in tele-operated robots.
 examples of autonomous robots: R2D2
 examples of tele-operated robots: NASA's robots before
Pathfinder
 Exo-skeletons are not robots, according to our definition.
 (E.g., Ripley's exo-skeleton in the movie Alien.)
Fundamentals of
Robot Control
Architectures
Distinguish the classical control used in robots and the
Robot Control Architectures that have more to do with AI
 Control:
 Robot control refers to the way in which the sensing
and action of a robot are coordinated.
 The many different ways in which robots can be controlled
all fall along a well-defined spectrum of control.
 Control Approaches:
 Reactive Control : Don’t think, (re)act.
 Behavior-Based Control : Think the way you act.
 Deliberative Control : Think hard, act later.
 Hybrid Control : Think and act independently, in parallel.
 Control Trade-offs:
 Thinking is slow.
 Reaction must be fast.
 Thinking enables looking ahead (planning) to avoid
bad solutions.
 Thinking too long can be dangerous (e.g., falling off
a cliff, being run over).
 To think, the robot needs (a lot of) accurate
information => world models.
 Food for Thought:
 Many robots you build in this class will use
reactive control. What more can you build on
top of it? Your dream robot?!
 Are exo-skeletons (e.g., Ripley’s in the movie
Alien) robots?
 Is HAL (in the movie 2001) a robot?
 Some intelligent Web agents are called
"softbots". Are they robots?
 Please review:
 1. The concept of a Finite State Machine (a
sequential system)
 2. The design of a reactive system may include
using design automation tools (FPGA, EPLD) that
you learn from other classes.
 3. Review the stages of designing FSMs
 4. Recall examples of FSMs
 5. Reactive machine may include counters,
shifters, adders, sequence generators, sequence
recognizers or other that we covered in ECE 271.
 Reactive Systems: Reactive Robot



Don’t think, react!
Systems
Reactive control is a technique for tightly coupling perception (sensing) and
action, to produce timely robotic response in dynamic and unstructured
worlds.
 Think of it as "stimulus-response".
 A powerful method: many animals are largely reactive.
 Limitations:
 Minimal (if any) state.
 No memory.
 No learning.
 No internal models / representations of the world.
Reactive versus Deliberative Systems
 Reactive Systems
 Collections of sense-act (stimulus-response) rules
 rules implemented as assembly code, C++ code, EPLD
combinational logic, FPGA state machine, state
machine with stacks (memory), etc
 Inherently concurrent (parallel)
 Very fast and reactive
 Unable to plan ahead
Reactive versus Deliberative Systems
 Deliberative Systems
 Based on the sense->plan->act model
 Inherently sequential
 Planning requires search, which is slow
 Search requires a world model
 World models become outdated
 Search and planning takes too long
 Hybrid Systems
 Combine the two extremes
 reactive system on the bottom
 deliberative system on the top
 connected by some intermediate layer
 Often called 3-layer systems
 Layers must operate concurrently
 Different representations and time-scales
between the layers
 The best or the worst of both worlds???
Behavior-Based Systems
 An alternative to hybrid systems
 Have the same capabilities
 the ability to act reactively
 the ability to act deliberatively
 There is no intermediate layer
 A unified, consistent representation is used in the
whole system
=> concurrent behaviors
 That resolves issues of time-scale
 Feedback Control
 Feedback: continuous monitoring of the sensors and reacting to their changes.
 Feedback control = self-regulation
 Two kinds of feedback:
 Positive
 Negative
 The basis of control theory
 - and + Feedback
 Negative feedback
 acts to regulate the state/output of the system
 e.g., if too high, turn down, if too low, turn up
 thermostats, toilets, bodies, robots...
 Positive feedback
 acts to amplify the state/output of the system
 e.g., the more there is, the more is added
 lynch mobs, stock market, ant trails...
 Feedback and Cybernetics
 Uses of Feedback
 Invention of feedback as the first simple robotics (does it work with our
definition)?
 The first example came from ancient Greek water systems (toilets)
 Forgotten and re-invented in the Renaissance for ovens/furnaces
 Really made a splash in Watt's steam engine
 Cybernetics
 Pioneered by Norbert Wiener (1940s) (From Greek "steersman" of
steam engine)
 Marriage of control theory (feedback control), information science and
biology
 Seeks principles common to animals and machines, especially for
control and communication
 Coupling an organism and its environment (situatedness)
W. Grey Walter’s Tortoise
 Machina Speculatrix
 1 photocell & 1 bump sensor, 1 motor
 Behaviors:
 seek light
 head to weak light
 back from bright light
 turn and push
 recharge battery
 Reactive control
 Turtle World (homework 2)
 Turtle Principles
 Parsimony: simple is better (e.g., clever recharging
strategy)
 Exploration/speculation: keeps moving (except when
charging)
 Attraction (positive tropism): motivation to
approach light
 Aversion (negative tropism): motivation to avoid
obstacles, slopes
 Discernment: ability to distinguish and make choices,
i.e., to adapt
 Turtle World (homework 2)
 Braitenberg Vehicles
 Valentino Braitenberg (early 1980s)
 Extended Walter’s model in a series of thought experiments
 Also based on analog circuits
 Direct connections (excitatory or inhibitory) between light sensors and motors
 Complex behaviors from very simple mechanisms
 By varying the connections and their strengths, numerous behaviors result, e.g.:
 "fear/cowardice" - flees light
 "aggression" - charges into light
 "love" - following/hugging
 many others, up to memory and learning!
 Reactive control
 Later implemented on real robots
 Artificial Intelligence
 Early Artificial Intelligence
 "Born" in 1955 at Dartmouth (thus both traditions are old!)
 "Intelligent machine" would use internal models to search for solutions and
then try them out (M. Minsky) => deliberative model!
 Planning became the tradition
 Explicit symbolic representations
 Hierarchical system organization
 Sequential execution
 Artificial Intelligence (AI)
 Early AI had a strong impact on early robotics
 Focused on knowledge, internal models, and reasoning/planning
 Eventually (1980s) robotics developed improved and innovative approaches =>
behavior-based and hybrid control
 AI itself has also evolved...
 But before that, early robots used deliberative control
 Early Robots
 Early Robots: SHAKEY
 At Stanford Research Institute (late 1960s)
 Vision and contact sensors
 STRIPS planner
 Visual navigation in a special world
 Deliberative
 Early Robots: HILARE
 LAAS in Toulouse, France (late 1970s)
 Video, ultrasound, laser range-finder
 Still in use!
 Multi-level spatial representations
 Deliberative -> Hybrid Control
 Early Robots:
CART/Rover
 Hans Moravec
 Stanford Cart (1977)
 followed by CMU rover (1983)
 Sonar and vision
 Deliberative control
 Robotics Today
• Assembly and manufacturing (most numbers of
robots, least autonomous)
 Materials handling
 Gophers (hospitals, security guards)
 Hazardous environments (Chernobyl)
 Remote environments (Pathfinder)
 Surgery (brain, hips)
 Tele-presence and virtual reality
 Entertainment
 Both approaches represented
Why is Robotics hard?
 Sensors are limited and crude
 Effectors are limited and crude
 State (internal and external, but mostly
external) is partially-observable
 Environment is dynamic (changing over
time)
 Environment is full of potentially-useful
information
 Key Issues of Robotics vs. AI
 Grounding in reality:
 not just planning in an abstract world
 Situatedness (ecological dynamics):
 tight connection with the environment
 Embodiment:
 having a body
 Emergent behavior:
 interaction with the environment
 Scalability:
 increasing task and environment complexity
 Food for thought. And Exam?...
 Argumentation:
 Try to argue that robotics is an engineering and not science
 Try to argue on the opposite
 Write an Eliza-like program with two robots arguing on this topic
 Sensing:
 Based on your knowledge from other classes, try to invent a new sensor that has so far
not been used much in robotics, such as smell sensor, polarized light sensor or radiation
sensor.
 Some sensors may need a lot of processing.
 What computer software and algorithms may be useful.
 Think for instance of having an array of directed microphones.
Food for thought. And Exam?...
 State:
 Give examples of various types of states for your Turtle
robot from homework 2.
 Using the concept of finite state machines and verification
of them, how can you verify the correctness of actions of
your robot, for instance that it reaches the goal or does not
bump to the obstacle.
 What can be proven ?
 How to design a program that will analyze the reachability
of your robot in certain space?
 Food for thought. And Exam?...
 Control:
 Using example of your Turtle, show examples of positive and negative
feedback.
 Do you have to redesign your control to be able to demonstrate both?
 Control Architectures:
 Using your Turtle, give examples what behaviors are reactive and what are
deliberative.
 Perhaps most of your Turtle behavior is reactive.
 How can you add planning on top of reactive behaviors?
 What kind of plans will be the robot able to execute.
 If a plan fails, what is the simple solution, using the concepts that you learned so
far?
 Food for thought. And Exam?...
 Learning
 As you remember, any kind of behavior that transforms the stored knowledge to a
new form in result of which the new behavior is more efficient, can be categorized
as learning, for instance, modifying the table of a reactive state machine.
 Add one more layer to your Turtle, the level of learning.
 How will you evaluate the quality of learning?
 Can GA be a learning mechanism?
 How learning can be introduced in the framework of tree search?
 Applications:
 Think about all possible practical applications for your Turtle.
 What should be added to it that it will remove mines from a former battlefield?
 That it will be finding weeds and destroying them?
 Give characterization of every task in terms of basic control architectures from the class