Intelligent Autonomous Robotics

Robotics technology has recently advanced to the point of being widely accessible for relatively low-budget research, as well as for graduate, undergraduate, and even secondary and primary school education. This lecture provides an example of how to productively use a cutting-edge advanced robotics platform for education and research by providing a detailed case study with the Sony AIBO robot, a vision-based legged robot. The case study used for this lecture is the UT Austin Villa RoboCup Four-Legged Team. This lecture describes both the development process and the technical details of its end result. The main contributions of this lecture are (i) a roadmap for new classes and research groups interested in intelligent autonomous robotics who are starting from scratch with a new robot, and (ii) documentation of the algorithms behind our own approach on the AIBOs with the goal of making them accessible for use on other vision-based and/or legged robot platforms.

This collection of twenty-three timely contributions covers a well-selected repertory of topics within the autonomous systems field. The book discusses a range of design, construction, control, and operation problems along with a multiplicity of well-established and novel solutions.

An introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that reviews over 300 current systems and examines the underlying technology. Autonomous robots are intelligent machines capable of performing tasks in the world by themselves, without explicit human control. Examples range from autonomous helicopters to Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner. In this book, George Bekey offers an introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that can be used both in the classroom and as a reference for industry professionals. He surveys the hardware implementations of more than 300 current systems, reviews some of their application areas, and examines the underlying technology, including control, architectures, learning, manipulation, grasping, navigation, and mapping. Living systems can be considered the prototypes of autonomous systems, and Bekey explores the biological inspiration that forms the basis of many recent developments in robotics. He also discusses robot control issues and the design of control architectures. After an overview of the field that introduces some of its fundamental concepts, the book presents background material on hardware, control (from both biological and engineering perspectives), software architecture, and robot intelligence. It then examines a broad range of implementations and applications, including locomotion (wheeled, legged, flying, swimming, and crawling robots), manipulation (both arms and hands), localization, navigation, and mapping. The many case studies and specific applications include robots built for research, industry, and the military, among them underwater robotic vehicles, walking machines with four, six, and eight legs, and the famous humanoid robots Cog, Kismet, ASIMO, and QRIO. The book concludes with reflections on the future of robotics—the potential benefits as well as the possible dangers that may arise from large numbers of increasingly intelligent and autonomous robots.

The second edition of a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of mobile robotics, from algorithms to mechanisms. Mobile robots range from the Mars Pathfinder mission's teleoperated Sojourner to the cleaning robots in the Paris Metro. This text offers students and other interested readers an introduction to the fundamentals of mobile robotics, spanning the mechanical, motor, sensory, perceptual, and cognitive layers the field comprises. The text focuses on mobility itself, offering an overview of the mechanisms that allow a mobile robot to move through a real world environment to perform its tasks, including locomotion, sensing, localization, and motion planning. It synthesizes material from such fields as kinematics, control theory, signal analysis, computer vision, information theory, artificial intelligence, and probability theory. The book presents the techniques and technology that enable mobility in a series of interacting modules. Each chapter treats a different aspect of mobility, as the book moves from low-level to high-level details. It covers all aspects of mobile robotics, including software and hardware design considerations, related technologies, and algorithmic techniques. This second edition has been revised and updated throughout, with 130 pages of new material on such topics as locomotion, perception, localization, and planning and navigation. Problem sets have been added at the end of each chapter. Bringing together all aspects of mobile robotics into one volume, Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots can serve as a textbook or a working tool for beginning practitioners. Curriculum developed by Dr. Robert King, Colorado School of Mines, and Dr. James Conrad, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, to accompany the National Instruments LabVIEW Robotics Starter Kit, are available. Included are 13 (6 by Dr. King and 7 by Dr. Conrad) laboratory exercises for using the LabVIEW Robotics Starter Kit to teach mobile robotics concepts.

After a long period, in which the research focused mainly on industrial robotics, nowadays scientists aim to build machines able to act autonomously in unstructured domains, and to interface friendly with humans, while performing intelligently their assigned tasks. Such intelligent autonomous systems are now being intensively developed, and are ready to be applied to every field, from social life to modern enterprises. We believe the following years will be increasingly characterised by their extensive use. This is dramatically changing the whole scenario of human society.

The International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS) conference brings together leading researchers interested in all aspects of autonomy and adaptivity of artificial systems. This book contains the proceedings of the tenth IAS in Baden Baden, Germany.

This book presents the latest advances and research achievements in the fields of autonomous robots and intelligent systems, presented at the IAS-15 conference, held in Baden-Baden, Germany, in June 2018. It brings together contributions from researchers, engineers and practitioners from all over the world on the main trends of robotics: navigation, path planning, robot vision, human detection, and robot design – as well as a wide range of applications. This installment of the conference reflects the rise of machine learning and deep learning in the robotics field, as employed in a variety of applications and systems. All contributions were selected using a rigorous peer-review process to ensure their scientific quality. The series of biennial IAS conferences was started in 1986: since then, it has become an essential venue for the robotics community.

The goal of the Seventh International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-7) was to exchange and stimulate research ideas that make future robots and systems more intelligent and autonomous. This volume of proceedings contains 71 technical papers by authors from 15 countries.