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a. 6 Common Sensing Techniques for Reactive Robots
b.

c.

Figure 6.4 Sequence showing a Denning mobile robot with redundant cameras, re-
sponding to sensing failures introduced by Dave Hershberger.

6.3.2 Attributes of a sensor suite
Everett 52 recommends that the following attributes should be considered for
the entire sensing suite:
1. Simplicity. As with any design, simple sensors which have straight-
forward hardware and operating principles are more desirable than sensors
which are complex and require constant maintenance.
2. Modularity. In order to reconfigure a sensor suite (add new sensors,
remove ones that aren’t appropriate for the task), the designer must be able
to remove one sensor and/or its perceptual schema without impacting any
other sensing capability.
3. Redundancy. In most military and industrial applications, it is impera-
tive that the robot function correctly, since it would put people at risk to try