Sensor-Driven Intelligent Robotics

Abstract

Publisher Summary Intelligent robotic systems should be capable of performing a range of complex tasks in unstructured and dynamic environments. This chapter discusses a number of important items associated with intelligent robots, role of vision sensing in intelligent robotics, and architecture for the design of an intelligent robot. The chapter also describes the computational task hierarchy that governs a model-based robot vision system, and presents a detailed tutorial on two important components of this hierarchy: image segmentation and matching. The main capabilities that intelligent robotic systems should possess include ability for perception of their environment, planning of their actions, and execution of the planned action. The two important components of a model-based vision system are image segmentation and the matching module. A procedure that allows transformation of 2D image coordinates into 3D world coordinates is also discussed in the chapter. The architecture and control aspects of an integrated sensor-based robotic system consist of six modules: supervisor, task planner, perception, motor, user interface, and knowledge-base. Intelligent, sensor-driven systems pose many challenging basic-research problems from a broad range of scientific and technological disciplines; however, there are many important application areas where such systems would be of significant value and utility, including hazardous environments such as nuclear plants, underwater, and space as well as many industrial-automation tasks. Recent advancements in the VLSI, computer-architectures, sensor-and robot-hardware, and artificial-intelligence fields may aid to the development of robust, practical, and cost-effective intelligent robotic systems for a wide variety of applications.