Robot Terminology

1
Robot Terminology

• Susan Fox
• COMP/NEUR 484
• Fall 2004

2
Robot agent parts

• Controller the brain, both hardware and
  software
• Sensors inputs from the environment
• Effectors actuators to alter the environment
  (mostly motors)

3
Sensor types

• Passive vs. Active passive sensors read what
  comes to them, active send out signals
• Range finders sensors which detect the distance
  from the robot to an object
• Remote sonar, infrared, laser
• Tactile sensors bump, whiskers, skin
• Absolute location GPS, other triangulation
  sensors
• Proprioceptive sensors for the robots own state
• Rotation sensors/Odometers
• Arm angle sensors
• Temperature, battery power, etc.

4
Degrees of Freedom

• One degree of freedom for each independent
  direction a robot or its effectors can move
• Car three degrees
• Airplane six degrees
• Robot arm as many as there are joints
• Effective DOF those robot has
• Controllable DOF those robot can control
• Holonomic when of effective DOF equals of
  controllable DOF

5
Sensor and Effector issues

• Sensor error all sensors are faulty to one
  extent or another
• Sensor modeling build probabilistic model of
  sensor function including faults
• Localization determining where the robot is
• Effector error all effectors are faulty

6
Vacuum environment

• Performance measure the number of clean squares
  over 1000 time steps
• Environment square A and square B, which may be
  dirty or clean, and the robot located in one or
  the other square
• Actuators the robot can suck, move right, move
  left, or do nothing
• Sensors the robot can detect which square it is
  in, and whether it is dirty or clean

7
Properties of Environments

• Fully observable vs. partially observable
• Deterministic vs. stochastic
• Episodic vs. sequential
• Static vs. dynamic
• Discrete vs. continuous
• Single agent vs. Multiagent

8
Classifying agents

• Simple reflex agent
• Reflex agent with state (model-based)
• Goal-based agent
• Utility-based agent

9
Agent design pseudocode

• Function AGENT(percepts) returns an action
• Return action