Eclectic Theory of Intelligent Robots

E. L. Hall, M. Ghaffari, X. Liao, S. M. Alhaj Ali*, Saurabh Sarkar, Scott Reynolds and Kovid Mathur Center for Robotics Research University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH 45221-0072 USA Phone: 513-556-2730 Fax: 513-556-3390 Email: [email protected] Internet: http://www.robotics.uc.edu/ * The Hashemite Univ. (Jordan) ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to introduce a concept of eclecticism for the design, development, simulation and implementation of real time controller for an intelligent, vision guided robots. The use of an eclectic perceptual, creative controller that can select its own tasks and perform autonomous operations is illustrated. This eclectic controller is a new paradigm for robot controllers and is an attempt to simplify the application of intelligent machines in general and robots in particular. The idea is to uses a task control center and dynamic programming approach. However, the information required for an optimal solution may only partially reside in a dynamic database so that some tasks are impossible to accomplish. So a decision must be made about the feasibility of a solution to a task before the task is attempted. Even when tasks are feasible, an iterative learning approach may be required. The learning could go on forever. The dynamic database stores both global environmental information and local information including the kinematic and dynamic models of the intelligent robot. The kinematic model is very useful for position control and simulations. However, models of the dynamics of the manipulators are needed for tracking control of the robot’s motions. Such models are also necessary for sizing the actuators, tuning the controller, and achieving superior performance. Simulations of various control designs are shown. Also, much of the model has also been used for the actual prototype Bearcat Cub mobile robot. This vision guided robot was designed for the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Contest. A novel feature of the proposed approach is that the method is applicable to both robot arm manipulators and robot bases such as wheeled mobile robots. This generality should encourage the development of more mobile robots with manipulator capability since both models can be easily stored in the dynamic database. The multi task controller also permits wide applications. The use of manipulators and mobile bases with a high-level control are potentially useful for space exploration, certain rescue robots, defense robots, and medical robotics and aids to daily living.