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Information about Autonomous Robot

Autonomous robots are robots which can perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous human guidance. Many kinds of robots have some degree of autonomy. Different robots can be autonomous in different ways. A high degree of autonomy is particularly desirable in fields such as space exploration, where communication delays and interruptions are unavoidable. Other more mundane uses benefit from having some level of autonomy, like cleaning floors, mowing lawns, and waste water treatment.

Some modern factory robots are "autonomous" within the strict confines of their direct environment. Maybe not every degree of freedom exists in their surrounding environment but the work place of the factory robot is challenging and can often be unpredictable or even chaotic. The exact orientation and position of the next object of work and (in the more advanced factories) even the type of object and the required task must be determined. This can vary unpredictably (at least from the robot's point of view).

One important area of robotics research is to enable the robot to cope with its environment whether this be on land, underwater, in the air, underground, or in space.

A fully autonomous robot has the ability to
  • Gain information about the environment.
  • Work for an extended period without human intervention.
  • Move either all or part of itself throughout its operating environment without human assistance.
  • Avoid situations that are harmful to people, property, or itself.
An autonomous robot may also learn or gain new capabilities like adjusting strategies for accomplishing its task(s) or adapting to changing surroundings.

Autonomous robots still require regular maintenance, as do other machines.

Examples of progress towards commercial autonomous robots

Self-maintenance

The first requirement for physical autonomy is the ability for a robot to take care of itself. Many of the battery powered robots on the market today can find and connect to a charging station, and some toys like Sony's Aibo are capable of self-docking to charge their batteries.

Self maintenance is based on "proprioception", or sensing one's own internal status. In the battery charging example, the robot can tell proprioceptively that its batteries are low and it then seeks the charger. Another common proprioceptive sensor is for heat monitoring. Increased proprioception will be required for robots to work autonomously near people and in harsh environments.
  • Common proprioceptive sensors are
Thermal
Hall Effect
Optical
Contact

Sensing the Environment

Exteroception is sensing things about the environment. Autonomous robots must have a range of environmental sensors to perform their task and stay out of trouble.
  • Common exteroceptive sensors are
Electromagnetic spectrum
Sound
Touch
Smell, odor
Temperature
Range to things in the environment
Attitude (Inclination)


Some robotic lawn mowers will adapt their programming by detecting the speed in which grass grows as needed to maintain a perfect cut lawn, and some vacuum cleaning robots have dirt detectors that sense how much dirt is being picked up and use this information to tell them to stay in one area longer.

Task performance

The next step in autonomous behavior is to actually perform a physical task. A new area showing commercial promise is domestic robots, with a flood of small vacuuming robots beginning with iRobot and Electrolux in 2002. While the level of intelligence is not high in these systems, they navigate over wide areas and pilot in tight situations around homes using contact and non-contact sensors. Both of these robots use proprietary algorithms to increase coverage over simple random bounce.

The next level of autonomous task performance requires a robot to perform conditional tasks. For instance, security robots can be programmed to detect intruders and respond in a particular way depending upon where the intruder is.

Indoor position sensing and navigation

For a robot to associate behaviors with a place (localization) requires it to know where it is and to be able to navigate point-to-point. Such navigation began with wire-guidance in the 1970s and progressed in the early 2000s to beacon-based triangulation. Current commercial robots autonomously navigate based on sensing natural features. The first commercial robots to achieve this were Pyxus' HelpMate hospital robot and the CyberMotion guard robot, both designed by robotics pioneers in the 1980s. These robots originally used manually created CAD floor plans, sonar sensing and wall-following variations to navigate buildings. The next generation, such as MobileRobots' PatrolBot and autonomous wheelchair, both introduced in 2004, have the ability to create their own laser-based maps of a building and to navigate open areas as well as corridors. Their control system changes its path on-the-fly if something blocks the way. Add the ability to control elevators and electronic doors, as Swisslog's and many other indoor bots do, and now robots can now freely navigate entire buildings. Autonomous stair-climbing, however, has not yet been achieved by any commercial bot.

As these indoor techniques continue to develop, vacuuming robots will gain the ability to clean a specific user specified room or a whole floor. Security robots will be able to cooperatively surround intruders and cut off exits. These advances also bring concommitant protections: robots' internal maps typically permit "forbidden areas" to be defined to prevent robots from autonomously entering certain regions.

Outdoor autonomous position-sensing and navigation

Outdoor autonomy is most easily achieved in the air, since obstacles are rare. Cruise missiles are rather dangerous highly autonomous robots. Pilotless drone aircraft are increasingly used for reconnaissance. Some of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are capable of flying their entire mission without any human interaction at all except possibly for the landing where a person intervenes using radio remote control. But some drone aircraft are capable of a safe, automatic landing also.

Outdoor autonomy is the most difficult for ground vehicles, due to: a) 3-dimensional terrain; b) great disparities in surface density; c) weather exigencies and d) instability of the sensed environment.

In the US, the MDARS project, which defined and built a prototype outdoor surveillance robot in the 1990s, is now moving into production and will be implemented in 2006. This robot can navigate semi-autonomously and detect intruders, using the MRHA software architecture planned for all unmanned military vehicles. MobileRobots.com will be producing its first outdoor surveillance robot for commercial use during the same year.

The Mars rovers MER-A and MER-B can find the position of the sun and navigate their own routes to destinations on the fly by:
  • mapping the surface with 3-D vision
  • computing safe and unsafe areas on the surface within that field of vision
  • computing optimal paths across the safe area towards the desired destination
  • driving along the calculated route;
  • repeating this cycle until either the destination is reached, or there is no known path to the destination
The DARPA Grand Challenge is an attempt to encourage development of even more autonomous capabilities for ground vehicles, while this has been the demonstrated goal for aerial robots since 1990 as part of the AUVSI International Aerial Robotics Competition.

Open problems in autonomous robotics

There are several open problems in autonomous robotics which are special to the field rather than being a part of the general pursuit of AI.

Energy autonomy & foraging

Researchers concerned with creating true artificial life are concerned not only with intelligent control, but further with the capacity of the robot to find its own resources through foraging (looking for food, which includes both energy and spare parts).

This is related to autonomous foraging, a concern within the sciences of behavioral ecology, social anthropology, and human behavioral ecology; as well as robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.

See also

External links

robot is a mechanical or virtual, artificial agent . It is usually an electromechanical system, which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own.
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Autonomy (Greek: Auto-Nomos - nomos meaning "law": one who gives oneself his/her own law) is the right to self-government. Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political, and bioethical philosophy.
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    Space exploration is the use of space technology to physically explore outer space, with both human spaceflight and robotic spacecraft.

    Introduction

    While the observation of objects in space—known as astronomy—pre-dates reliable recorded history, it was
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    An industrial robot is officially defined by ISO[1] as an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt, homonymous with "companion" in Japanese) is one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony; there have been several different models since their introduction in 1999.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Hall effect refers to the potential difference (Hall voltage) on the opposite sides of an electrical conductor through which an electric current is flowing, created by a magnetic field applied perpendicular to the current. Edwin Hall discovered this effect in 1879.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is the range of all possible electromagnetic radiation. The "electromagnetic spectrum" (usually just spectrum) of an object is the frequency range of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from thousands of kilometers down to fractions of
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave (through fluids as a compression wave, and through solids as both compression and shear waves).
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    odor or odour (see spelling differences) is a volatilized chemical compound, generally at a very low concentration, which humans and other animals perceive by the sense of olfaction. Odors are also called smells, which can refer to both pleasant and unpleasant odors.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    iRobot Corporation

    Public (NASDAQ:  IRBT )
    Founded 1990
    Founder Rodney Brooks, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner
    Headquarters Burlington, Massachusetts

    Key people Rodney Brooks, Founder/CTO
    Colin Angle, Founder/CEO
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    AB Electrolux

    Public ()
    Founded 1910
    Headquarters Stockholm, Sweden

    Revenue SEK 129.47 billion / US$ 16.3 billion (2005)
    Operating income SEK 3.94 billion / US$ 496.1 million (2005)
    Net income SEK 1.52 billion / US$ 191.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    PatrolBot is a programmable autonomous general purpose Service robot rover built by MobileRobots Inc. In various configurations, PatrolBots serve as bases for companies developing delivery robots, security robots, environmental monitoring rovers, guides and other indoor service
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    cruise missile is a guided missile which uses a lifting wing and most often a jet propulsion system to allow sustained flight. A cruise missile is, in essence, a flying bomb.
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    The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless cars, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research organization of the United States Department of Defense.
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    The International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) began in 1991 on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Since 1991 collegiate teams, with the backing of industry and government have fielded autonomous flying robots in an attempt to perform missions that
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Artificial Life, (commonly Alife or alife) is a field of study and associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry[1].
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    For the material that is eaten by foraging by animals, see Forage.
    Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment in which the animal lives.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Food is any substance, usually composed primarily of carbohydrates, fats, water and/or proteins, that can be eaten or drunk by an animal or human being for nutrition or pleasure.
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    energy (from the Greek ενεργός, energos, "active, working")[1] is a scalar physical quantity that is a property of objects and systems of objects which is conserved by nature.
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    Science (from the Latin scientia, 'knowledge'), in the broadest sense, refers to any systematic knowledge or practice.[1] Examples of the broader use included political science and computer science, which are not incorrectly named, but rather named according to
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    Behavioral ecology is the study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior, and the roles of behavior in enabling an animal to adapt to its environment (both intrinsic and extrinsic).
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    Social anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies how currently living human beings behave in social groups.

    Substantive focus and practice

    Practioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long term, intensive field studies (including participant
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Human behavioral ecology (HBE) or human evolutionary ecology applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization to the study of human behavioral and cultural diversity.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    robot is a mechanical or virtual, artificial agent . It is usually an electromechanical system, which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    artificial intelligence (or AI) is "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximizes its chances of success.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Artificial Life, (commonly Alife or alife) is a field of study and associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry[1].
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    artificial intelligence (or AI) is "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximizes its chances of success.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    The driverless car concept embraces an emerging family of highly automated cognitive and control technologies, ultimately aimed at a full "taxi-like" experience for car users, but without a human driver.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Friendly Robotics is an Israeli company selling RoboMower, an autonomous lawn mower, and Friendly Vac, a vacuum cleaner robot.

    History

    The company was created in 1995 by Udi Peless and Shai Abramson and concentrate on developing robots that can automate tasks that require
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Evolutionary Robotics (ER) is a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to develop controllers for autonomous robots. Algorithms in ER frequently operate on populations of candidate controllers, initially selected from some distribution.
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