Page 19 - Sensing, Intelligence, Motion : How Robots and Humans Move in an Unstructured World

xviii PREFACE

The hope is that by doing so we can get a better insight into the nature
of the problem, and can help build synergistic human–robot teams for
tele-operation tasks.
(d) Review sensing hardware that is necessary to realize the SIM paradigm.

The book is intended to serve three purposes: (1) as a course textbook; (2) as
a research text covering in depth one particular area of robotics; (3) as a program
of research and development in robotic automation of unstructured tasks.

As a Textbook. A good portion of this book grew out of graduate and senior
undergraduate courses on robot motion planning taught by the author at Yale
University and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. As often happens with
research-oriented courses, the course kept changing as more research material
appeared and our knowledge of the subject expanded.
The text assumes a basic college background in mathematics and computer
science. A prior introductory course in robotics and some knowledge in topology
will be helpful but are not required. Some more exposure to topology is advised
for mastering the analysis that appears in Section 5.8 (Chapter 5) and the first two
pages of Section 6.2.4 (Chapter 6). Conclusions from this analysis, in particular
the formulation of algorithms, are written at the level compatible with the rest
of the book, though. The instructor is advised to glance through the chapters
beforehand to decide which level of what background a given chapter or section
requires.
Homework examples are provided as needed. In my view, a good home-
work structure for an advanced course like this one includes two components:
(a) ordinary homework assignments that dig deeper in the student’s knowledge,
are modest in number, and require a week or two to complete each assignment;
and (b) a course project that is initiated in the course’s first few weeks, goes in
parallel with it, and is defended at the end of the course, with the defense treated
as the final exam. The weights of those components in the student final grade can
be, say, 50% for the homework, 20% for the midterm assessment of the project,
and 30% for the final text-plus-presentation-before-class of the project. A list of
ideas for course projects is provided in Chapter 9.
Assuming a conventional two-semester school year, this book has about two
semesters worth of material. A one-semester course hence calls for choices. A
typical structure that covers ideas and computational schemes of the sensor-
based motion planning paradigm will include Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 (Motion
Planning—Introduction, A Quick Sketch of Major Issues in Robotics, Motion
Planning for a Mobile Robot, Motion Planning for Two-Dimensional Arm Manip-
ulators, Motion Planning for Three-Dimensional Arm Manipulators). Let us call
this sequence the core course. The sequence contains no control theory or elec-
tronics, and it allows for the widest audience in terms of students’ majors.
For a strictly engineering class where students have already had courses in
controls and electronics, the instructor may want to sharply contract the time
for Chapter 2 and provide instead a deeper understanding of the effects of robot