Announcements

• Final project presentations will be given in class on Thursday, 21 December.
• If you want to install Pyro on your computer, click here for information on how to do this.
• You can also download a Knoppix CD for running Pyro on an Intel architecture computer here

Class Meetings

Thursdays, 5:30-8:00
Olsen 401

Office Hours

Tuesdays 10:00-11:15
Thursdays 1:00-3:00
and by appointment

Handouts and Readings

12/7/06: Other Topics in Robotics (Readings for 14 December)

• A Self-Reconfigurable Modular Robot: Reconfiguration Planning and Experiments, Eiichi Yoshida, Satoshi Murata, Akiya Kamimura, Kohji Tomita, Haruhisa Kurokawa and Shigeru Kokaji, International Journal of Robotics Research, 21(10):903-916, October 2002.
• Towards Terrain-Aided Navigation for Underwater Robots, Stefan Willams, Gamini Dissanayake and Hugh Durrant-Whyte, Advanced Robotics. 15(5) pages 533-549, 2001.
• All Robots Are Not Created Equal: The Design and Perception of Humanoid Robot Heads, Carl F. DiSalvo, Francine Gemperle, Jodi Forlizzi and Sara Kiesler, Designing Interactive Systems, London, June 2002.
• and one more of your choosing on any robotics topic. Plan to spend 5 minutes summarizing your paper for the whole class.

11/30/06: Assistive Technology (Redings for 7 December)

• Automation as Caregiver: A Survey of Issues and Technologies, Karen Haigh and Holly A. Yanco, Proceedings of the AAAI-2002 Workshop on Automation as Caregiver: The Role of Intelligent Technology in Elder Care, Edmonton, Alberta, August 2002.
• Towards Robotic Assistants in Nursing Homes: Challenges and Results, Joelle Pineau, Michael Montemerlo, Martha Pollack, Nicholas Roy and Sebastian Thrun, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Volume 42, Issues 3-4, 31 March 2003, pages 271-281.
• Hands-off Assistive Robotics for Post-Stroke Arm Rehabilitation, Jon Eriksson, Maja J. Mataric and Carolee J. Winstein, International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics, Chicago, Illinois, Jun 2005.
• User-Adaptive Control of a Magnetorheological Prosthetic Knee, Hugh Herr and Ari Wilkenfeld, Industrial Robot: An International Journal 2003; 30: 42-55.

11/16/06: Human-Robot Interaction (Readings for 30 November)

• A Survey of Socially Interactive Robots, Terrance Fong, Illah Nourbakhsh and Kerstin Dautenhahn, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 42(3-4), pages 143-166, 2003.
• MINERVA: A Second Generation Mobile Tour-Guide Robot, Sebatian Thrun, Maren Bennewitz, Wolfram Burgard, Armin B. Cremers, Frank Dellaert, Dieter Fox, Dirk Haehnel, Charles Rosenberg, Nicholas Roy, Jamieson Schulte, and Dirk Schulz, Proceedings, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 10-15 May 1999.
• Roball, the Rolling Robot, Francois Michaud and Serge Caron, Autonomous Robots, 12(2), pages 211-222, 2002.
• Analysis of Human-Robot Interaction for Urban Search and Rescue. Holly A. Yanco, Michael Baker, Robert Casey, Brenden Keyes, Philip Thoren, Jill L. Drury, Douglas Few, Curtis Nielsen and David Bruemmer. Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD, August 22-24, 2006.

11/9/06: Multi-Agent Robotics (Readings for 16 November)

• A Formal Framework for the Study of Task Allocation in Multi-robot Systems, Brian Gerkey and Maja Mataric, International Journal of Robotics Research, 23(9):939-954, September 2004.
• Task Decomposition, Dynamic Role Assignment, and Low-bandwidth Communication for Real-time Strategic Teamwork, Peter Stone and Manuela Veloso, Artificial Intelligence, 110(2), pages 241-273, 1998.
• Cooperative Transport by Ants and Robots, C. Ronald Kube and Eric Bonabeau, Robotics and Autonomous Systems 30(1-2), pages 85-101, 2000.
• Cooperation Without Deliberation: A Minimal Behavior-based Approach to Multi-robot Teams, Barry Werger, Artificial Intelligence, 110, pages 293-320, 1999.

11/2/06: Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks (Readings for 9 November)

• Evolving 3D Morphology and Behavior by Competition, Karl Sims, Proceedings of Artificial Life IV, Rodney Brooks and Pattie Maes (eds.), MIT Press/Bradford Books, pages 28-39, 1994.
• Generative Encodings for the Automated Design of Modular Physical Robots, Gregory S. Hornby, Hod Lipson and Jordan B. Pollack, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 19(4), pages 703-719, 2003.
• Neural Network Vision for Robot Driving, Dean Pomerleau, The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks, M. Arbib, ed., 1995.

10/26/06: Reinforcement Learning (Readings for 2 November)

• Reinforcement Learning: A Survey, Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Michael L. Littman, Andrew W. Moore, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 1996.
• Learning to Coordinate Behaviors, Pattie Maes and Rodney A. Brooks, Proceedings of the 8th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-90), AAAI Press/MIT Press, pages 796-802, 1990.
• Effective Reinforcement Learning for Mobile Robots, William D. Smart and Leslie Pack Kaelbling, "Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2002)", volume 4, pages 3404-3410, 2002.
• A good overview of programming a robot to use RL. No discussion necessary.

10/19/06: Mapping and Localization (Readings for 26 October)

• Robotic Mapping: A Survey, Sebastian Thrun, In Exploring Artificial Intelligence in the New Millenium, Morgan Kaufmann, 2002.
• Robust Monte Carlo Localization for Mobile Robots, S. Thrun, D. Fox, W. Burgard, and F. Dellaert, Artificial Intelligence, 2001.
• Appearance-Based Place Recognition for Topological Localization, Iwan Ulrich and Illah Nourbakhsh, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, San Francisco, CA, April 2000, pp. 1023-1029. Best Vision Paper Award.
• Estimating Uncertain Spatial Relationships in Robotics, Peter Cheeseman, Randall C. Smith, Matthew Self, in Autonomous Robot Vehicles, I. J. Cox and G. T. Wilfong, editors, pp. 167-193, Springer-Verlag, 1990.
• An excellent collection of materials on Kalman filtering

10/5/06: Vision (Readings for 12 October)

• Vision for Mobile Robot Navigation: A Survey, Guilherme N. DeSouza and Avinash C. Kak, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol 24, No 2, February 2002.
• Vision-Guided Flight Stability and Control for Micro Air Vehicles, Scott M. Ettinger, Michael C. Nechyba, Peter G. Ifju and Martin Waszak, IROS 2002.
• Vision-based Autonomous Landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Srikanth Saripalli, James F. Montgomery and Gaurav S. Sukhatme, ICRA 2002.
• Robust Car Tracking Using Kalman Filtering and Bayesian Templates, Frank Dellaert and Chuck Thorpe, Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 1997.

9/21/06: Autonomy (Readings for 5 October)

• A Model for Types and Levels of Human Interaction with Automation, Raja Parasuraman, Thomas B. Sheridan, and Christopher D. Wickens, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics Part A: Systems and Humans, Vol. 30, No. 3, May 2000.
• Experiments in Adjustable Autonomy, Michael A. Goodrich, Dan R. Olsen Jr., Jacob W. Crandall and Thomas J. Palmer, Proceedings of IJCAI-01.
• Metrics, Schmetrics! How The Heck Do You Determine A UAV's Autonomy Anyway?, Bruce T. Clough, Proceedings of PerMIS 2002.
• Blending Human and Robot Inputs for Sliding Scale Autonomy, Munjal Desai and Holly A. Yanco, Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Nashville, TN, August 2005.

9/14/06: Architectures and Lab 1 (Readings for 21 September)

• Lab 1, due Thursday, 5 October.
• Pyro Module: Introuction. Follow the links in the section to go through the entire introduction. I've printed out a couple of the sections for you, which were distributed in class:
  • The Pyro Interface
  • Pyro Sensors
  • Pyro Brains
• Pyro Module: Direct Control
• A Mobile Automaton: An Application of Artificial Intelligence Techniques, Nils J. Nilsson, Technical Note 40. AI Center, SRI International, Mar 1969. Presented at IJCAI 1969.
• A Robust Layered Control System for a Mobile Robot, Rodney A. Brooks, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 2(1), pages 14-23, April 1986.
• What are Plans For?, Philip Agre and David Chapman, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 6, Elsevier Science, pages 17-34, 1990.
• On Three-Layer Architectures, Eran Gat, Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robotics, in D. Kortenkamp, R. P. Bonnasso and R. Murphy (eds.), AAAI Press, pages 195-210, 1998.
• If interested, a more complete report on Shakey is available. Shakey The Robot, Nils J. Nilsson, Technical Note 323, AI Center, SRI International, Apr 1984. It is quite long, so was not printed for class distribution.

9/7/06:Introduction (Readings for 14 September)

• Syllabus
• Lecture Notes
• "Intelligence Without Reason," Rodney A. Brooks, Proceedings of 12th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-91), Sydney, Australia, pages 569-595, August 1991.
• "Modeling Adaptive Autonomous Agents," Pattie Maes, Artificial Life, 1(1-2), MIT Press, pages 135-162, 1994.
• "Totem, Toys and Tools (Chapter 5)", The Living Brain, W. Grey Walter, Penguin Books, 1961. Also the appendices.
• Vehicles, Chapters 1-8, Valentino Braitenberg, MIT Press, 1986.