Page 101 - Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots : Inside the Mindo f an Intellegent Machine

Chapter 6

A week or so before a critical milestone test; we were informed that there had been a
small administrative change. We would not be installing at the rack warehouse at all, but
rather at a pallet warehouse full of crates. To us, the change was a bit like telling General
st
Eisenhower on June 1 that the invasion of Europe was to be a land invasion through
Russia instead of an amphibious assault at Normandy. What? Is there a problem?

As luck would have it, we had recently added control variables to the wall imaging algo-
rithms that allowed us to navigate from the not-so-straight walls of office cubicles. Our
flexible communications protocol and programming language allowed us, on site, to
manipulate these variables and view the results. Thus, we were able to adapt the cubicle
navigation variables to allow sonar navigation from crates.

This solution was not entirely kosher, since we had to move a significant number of
crates to assure that they were roughly along the edges of the aisles. Even so, with a
combination of flexible communication and control, ingenuity, and our newly acquired
forklift driving skills we saved the day—or so we thought.

Although there were still several years of development time available before scheduled
system deployment, several additional “administrative” changes would occur. Despite
our warnings about the desperate need, funding for long-range navigation research was
omitted from the next budget on the justification that the milestone test had demon-
strated that the system needed no further navigational enhancement! Other participants,
it seemed, needed the resources.

Our luck held out a bit longer, when in the nick of time we were able to fund the needed
long range laser navigation from unrelated commercial contracts. Unfortunately, a final
administrative change came when the RFP (Request for Proposals) was issued for the
production of the system. The specification mandated that the communications proto-
col be changed from our flexible “proprietary” protocol to a rigid protocol that would be
4
used by all future robots fielded by the program, both indoor and outdoor . Through
this and other key decisions, the program management snatched defeat from the very
jaws of victory!

Rigid protocols are fairly common in peripheral systems such as printers, laser rang-
ers, and other measurement systems. In fairness, a rigid protocol is often the appro-
priate choice in such systems. But even in these limited systems one often sees the
beginnings of real problems for a rigid protocol.

4 In this the program has thus far succeeded in that no robots of either type have yet been fielded.
The contract to modify our robots was given to a giant defense contractor, and after several costly
overruns, the warehouse robot program was placed in mothballs and the manager was given a
promotion.

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