Page 20 - Sensing, Intelligence, Motion : How Robots and Humans Move in an Unstructured World

PREFACE xix

dynamics on motion planning, covered in Chapter 4, plus a cursorial review
of principles of design of sensing devices necessary for realizing sensor-based
motion planning strategies, Chapter 8. Any group can benefit from Chapter 7,
which is devoted to human performance in motion planning and spatial reason-
ing tasks. A two-semester sequence will comfortably cover all those chapters
(with the danger of one’s noticing some repetitions necessitated by the foreseen
different uses of the book).
The decision to include in the course the topics covered in Chapters 4, 7, and
8, as well as the time devoted to the introductory Chapters 1 and 2 will depend
much on the mixture of students in class, in particular their prior exposure to
robotics, control theory, and electronics. Mandating prior courses on these topics
may introduce interesting difficulties. In my experience, a significant percent-
age of graduate students attracted to this course come from disciplines outside
of engineering, computer science, physics, and mathematics—such as business
administration, psychology, and even medicine. This is not surprising since the
course material touches upon the future of their disciplines rather deeply. Stu-
dents from some areas, especially the latter three above, are usually interested
in ideas and cognitive underpinnings of the subject. These students are often
extremely good, quick, and knowledgeable and have a reasonably good back-
ground in mathematics. Often such students do well in homework assignments,
bring in new ideas, and come up with wonderful course projects in their appro-
priate areas. Denying their participation would be a pity, in my view—after all,
robotics is a wide and widely connected field.
With such students in class, the instructor may choose to spend a bit more
time on the introductory sections, in order to bring up to speed students who
have had no past exposure to the robotics field. The instructor may also want to
complement introductory material with a relevant textbook (some such textbooks
are mentioned in Chapters 1 and 2). Students’ grades in the homework at the end
of Chapter 2 will give the instructor a good indication of how prepared they are
for the core course.

As a Research Text. This book is targeted to people who are interested in
or are directly involved in research and development of robot and human–robot
interaction systems. If one’s goal is to understand the underlying issues or design
a system capable of purposeful motion in an unstructured environment while
protecting the robot’s whole body—in streets, homes, undersea, deep space,
agriculture, and so on—today SIM is the only consistent approach one can count
on. This is not to say that the book contains answers to all questions. It provides
some constructive answers, and it calls for continuation.
The book should also be of interest to people working in areas that are
tangentially connected to robotics, such as sensor development and design of
tele-operated systems. And finally, the book will hopefully appeal to people
interested in the wide complex of underlying issues in robotics and human–robot
interaction, from mathematical and algorithmic questions to cognitive science to
advanced robot applications.