Dustbot: Bringing a Vacuum-Cleaner Agent to Life

A simple vacuum-cleaner agent is introduced in Russell and Norvig’s artificial intelligence (AI) text [Russell and Norvig, 2003] to illustrate different agent types to beginning AI students. Underlying the different agent types are several simple actions that take place in a vacuum cleaner world consisting of a grid of squares, some of which contain dirt. The agent’s actions include turning left or right, moving forward, and picking up dirt. Having students write a program to simulate the vacuum world is a useful way to provide them with a feeling for different agent types in a simplified environment. However, implementing a vacuum-cleaner agent using a low-cost robotics kit might teach students much more about agents in the real world and could serve to get them interested in and excited about AI in a way that working with purely simulated environments may not. This paper describes the design and implementation of “Dustbot”, a robot based on the Russell and Norvig vacuum-cleaner agent. The Dustbot project was carried out as part of an independent study by a student who had already taken the undergraduate AI course. The purpose of the project was to test and debug the vacuumcleaner robot and to develop a set of instructions that could be used in subsequent offerings of our undergraduate AI course.