Page 328 - Introduction to AI Robotics

8.8 Exercises
Exercise 8.5 311
Describe three approaches to societal behavior: social rules, internal motivation, and
leadership.
Exercise 8.6
Were the behaviors for the Nerd Herd purely reactive? Why or why not?

Exercise 8.7 [Programming)]
Implement the space ant example with 3-5 robots capable of phototaxis and dead
reckoning.
a. Multi-agent foraging. Start with only a phototropic and avoid-robot behavior,
where a robot is an obstacle that isn’t a light. The program will start with an
empty world consisting of a light (you may need to make a "bigger light" by plac-
ing lights next to each other). Between 2 and 5 phototropic robots will be placed
at different random starting locations in the world. Each will wander through the
world, avoiding obstacles, until it comes to a light. Then it will move directly to
the light (attractive field). If more than one robot is attracted to the same light,
they should center themselves evenly around the light. Compare this with the
program in Ch. 5 which had a single robot forage for lights. Which gets more
lights faster?
b. Cooperating to bring the food home. Now add the push-to-home behavior where
the robot wants to be on a straight line behind the light to home. What happens
now?

Exercise 8.8 [World Wide Web]
Visit the RoboCup web site at www.robocup.org. Which team has performed the best
over the past 3 years? Describe the multi-agent organization in terms of control and
cooperation.

Exercise 8.9 [Advanced Reading]
Read Ed Durfee’s humorous invited paper on DAI, “What Your Computer Really
Needs to Know, You Learned in Kindergarten” (proceedings of the Tenth National
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1992). For each of his ten issues (“Share Every-
thing,” “Play Fair,” etc.), describe how this applies to robots. For each issue give an
example of how it applies to a robot team described in this chapter.
Exercise 8.10 [Advanced Reading]
Read and summarize “Behavior-Based Formation Control for Multirobot Teams,” by
Tucker Balch and Ron Arkin in IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, vol. 14,
no 6., 1998.

Exercise 8.11 [Science Fiction]
Watch the movie "Silent Running" about a team of three mobile robots (Huey, Dewey,
and Louie) working on a space station. Classify their teamwork in terms of hetero-
geneity, control, cooperation and goals.