Artificial Minds: Autonomous Robots

Paper Summary:

This document is comprised of case studies of two autonomous robot projects, namely Frank Scott's Hexapod Robots, and MIT's Robot Ant Colony. Each case study describes the behaviour each robot exhibits, and technical information on how this behaviour is executed including mechanical parts, digital circuitry and programming techniques. The case studies are followed by a discussion of embodied cognition, and how the above robots' actions can be explained in terms of embodied cognition. It also discusses emergent phenomenon, both in nature and artificially intelligent robots.

From the Paper:

"The Rodney series of robots refers to a group of three six-legged autonomous robots whose design is based upon Rodney Brooks' subsumption architecture. Rodney 3 is the most refined and recent robot. It supersedes both Rodney 1 & 2 and for this reason will be the focus of this summary. Rodney 3 is designed to operate in an environment featuring a slightly uneven surface that may be interrupted by many small obstacles and an occasional large obstacle, e.g. a pebbled track with the odd large stone or similar obstacle. The robot's task is to climb over the smaller objects, and to avoid objects that are too large to climb over. To achieve the climbing action, all six legs must be able to operate independently of each other. The robot travels forward in a straight line until a large object is encountered. To avoid the object, it must reverse a few steps, shift its direction and continue its forward motion."

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