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From: lipsettm@crl1.crl.aecl.ca (Mike Lipsett)
Subject: Re: good robot book, to subsume or not to subsume?
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Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 13:48:10 GMT
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In article <3kqujk$ket@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> farnham@ix.netcom.com (G Farnham) writes:
>Minimalist Mobile Robotics
>A Colony-style Architecture for an Artificial Creature
>by Jonathan H. Connell 1990
>
>Volume 5 of Perspectives in Artificial Intelligence
>
>ISBN 0-12-185230-X
>
>This book presents a case study of a mobile robot with a very specific mission,
> collecting and retrieving soda cans.  The robot is used as a platform to study
> a specific application of a variant of Brooks subsumption architecture.
>
>A valuable component of this book is the fact that its a presentation of a real 
>robot with real hardware used that solves an entire problem, albeit a very 
>specific one.
>

(...snip...)

>I recommend it.
>

So do I. This is a good treatment, and not far from hobbyist level, 
not because it's hokey, but because it's been planned for implementation 
without elaborate processors and precise sensors. 


>Sooooo, what does everyone in comp.robotics land think of subsumption 
>architecture?  This topic is usually discussed as an alternative to 
>traditional approach of centralized control with world modeling.  
>Will subsumption become the accepted or traditional architecture 
>in the near future?

I think that the two
flavours of robotics will come together. As processors and sensors 
get cheaper, subsystems with modeling of some aspect of the world will
compete for control of a robot's actuators.  But the algebra of assigning
task hierarchies will have to ensure that performance criteria are met. 
I'll stop before this start sounding like Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
 
Just my C$0.02

Cheers,
- Mike

My employer didn't type this.
