Sensing, Intelligence, Motion

Book excerpt: A leap forward in the field of robotics Until now, most of the advances in robotics have taken place instructured environments. Scientists and engineers have designedhighly sophisticated robots, but most are still only able tooperate and move in predetermined, planned environments designedspecifically for the robots and typically at very high cost. Thisnew book takes robotics to the next level by setting forth thetheory and techniques needed to achieve robotic motion inunstructured environments. The ability to move and operate in anarbitrary, unplanned environment will lead to automating a widerange of new robotic tasks, such as patient care, toxic sitecleanup, and planetary exploration. The approach that opens the door for robots to handle unstructuredtasks is known as Sensing-Intelligence-Motion (SIM), which drawsfrom research in topology, computational complexity, controltheory, and sensing hardware. Using SIM as an underlyingfoundation, the author's carefully structured presentation isdesigned to: * Formulate the challenges of sensor-based motion planning and thenbuild a theoretical foundation for sensor-based motion planningstrategies * Investigate promising algorithmic strategies for mobile robotsand robot arm manipulators, in both cases addressing motionplanning for the whole robot body * Compare robot performance to human performance in sensor-basedmotion planning to gain better insight into the challenges of SIMand help build synergistic human-robot teams for tele-operationtasks. It is both exciting and encouraging to discover that robotperformance decisively exceeds human performance in certain tasksrequiring spatial reasoning, even when compared to trainedoperators * Review sensing hardware that is necessary to realize the SIMparadigm Some 200 illustrations, graphic sketches, and photos are includedto clarify key issues, develop and validate motion planningapproaches, and demonstrate full systems in operation. As the first book fully devoted to robot motion planning inunstructured environments, Sensing, Intelligence, Motion is amust-read for engineers, scientists, and researchers involved inrobotics. It will help them migrate robots from highly specializedapplications in factories to widespread use in society whereautonomous robot motion is needed.