Page 271 - Introduction to AI Robotics

254
Exercise 6.23 6 Common Sensing Techniques for Reactive Robots
[Programming]
Create a color histogram program. Construct the color histogram, E, for four differ-
ent brightly colored objects, such as dolls of the South Park or the Simpsons cartoon
characters. Present the program with a different image, I, of one of the characters and
compute the histogram intersection with each of the four E. Does the highest match
correctly identify the character? Why or why not?

6.11 End Notes

For the roboticist’s bookshelf.
Hobart Everett literally wrote the book, Sensors for Mobile Robots, 52 on robotic sen-
sors, which provides both analytical details of sensors plus practical experience from
Everett’s many years with the Navy work on robots. He has built a series of mobile
robots called ROBART (a pun on Everett’s nickname, Bart); ROBART II has been in
continuous operation since 1982. Everett’s laboratory has to be one of the most ideally
situated in the world. It is in San Diego, overlooks the Pacific Ocean, and is adjacent
to a frequently used volleyball court.

Hans Moravec.
If Joe Engelberger is known as the father of industrial robotics, Hans Moravec is best
known as the father of AI robotics. He has also become a well-known author, argu-
ing for the inevitability of machine intelligence in controversial books such as Mind
Children 94 and Robot: mere machine to transcendent mind. 96 His work with the Stan-
ford Cart was a catalyzing event in attracting attention to robotics after the years of
slow progress following Shakey. Documentaries will occasionally run edited footage
of the Stanford Cart navigating outdoors, avoiding obstacles. Since the cart trav-
eled in a stop-start fashion, with 15 minutes or so between updates, the location of
the shadows visibly change. Moravec’s office mate, Rodney Brooks, helped with the
recording.
Undergraduates and sonars.
It is interesting to note that the first serious analysis of the Polaroid sonars was done
by an undergraduate at MIT, Michael Drumheller. Drumheller’s paper, “Mobile Ro-
bot Localization Using Sonar,” was eventually published in the IEEE Transactions on
Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence in 1987, and became a classic.

Ballard and Brown.
Dana Ballard and Chris Brown wrote the first textbook on computer vision, entitled
appropriately Computer Vision. Both have worked with robots, though Brown more
than Ballard. I met both of them at a workshop at a beach resort in Italy in early 1990.
I had just arrived from a harrowing bus ride from the airport and had to go past the
pool to my room in the hopes of recovering from jet lag before the meeting started in