NOTE: This assignment, like others in this class, is due at the beginning of the class period. This means that if you are even a minute late, you lose 20%. If you are worried about potentially being late, turn in your homework ahead of time. Do this by submitting them to me during office hours or by sliding it under my office door. Do not send assignments to me through email or leave them in my departmental mail box.
The readings (particularly the textbook by Murphy and the paper by Brooks) and lectures have covered the "traditional decomposition" of robotic intelligence into functional modules and the behavior-based approach to robotics. How do these things relate to robotics research as it is practiced today?
Read the paper "Traversability Index: A New Concept for Planetary Rovers" by Homayoun Seraji (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Detroit Michigan, May 1999, pages 2006-2013), available on the web through the OU library. (Start at <http://www-lib.ou.edu/>, choose "LORA," and under the databases, choose "IEEE Electronic Library (IEL).")
Answer the following question:
Is the approach described in this paper an example of the functional modules approach, the behavior-based approach, both, or neither?
If you answered that this is an example of the functional modules approach, carry out the following exercise and answer the following additional question:
Functional Modules Exercise:
Describe the different modules, how each one functions, how they are pipelined together, and how they are different from and similar to the modules that we discussed in class as the stereotypical functional modules of the traditional decomposition.
Functional Modules Question:
Why does the approach described in this paper not qualify as a behavior-based approach?
Behavior-Based Exercise:
Show how to implement the approach given in this paper using either the subsumption architecture of Brooks or the schema theory of Arkin. If you choose to use the subsumption architecture, you will need to show the levels, the units within each level, and the inhibition and suppression links between levels. If you choose to use schema theory, you will need to describe both the perceptual and the motor schema for each behavior and the method for behavior fusion of the various motor schema.
Behavior-Based Question:
Why does the approach described in this paper not qualify as a functional modules approach?
If you answered that this is an example of both, carry out both the functional modules exercise and the behavior-based exercise, given above.
If you answered that this is an example of neither, answer both the functional modules question and the behavior-based question, given above.
Carry out the following exercise:
Find a weakness in the approach described by the paper for integrating the outputs from the various sub-systems into the final decisions for direction and velocity. Describe a situation in which this approach would cause sub-optimal results. Propose an improvement to how this system does this integration.
Turn in a typed copy of your answers to these questions. In total, your answers should run from 1.5 to 2 pages in length (roughly 80 characters per line, 50 lines per page). This does not count any figures that you may choose to include, which may be of any size.