1.6: Exercises
- Page ID
- 14772
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Take-Home Lessons
- How to best solve a problem is a function of the available sensing, actuation, computation and communication abilities of the available platform. Usually, there exist trade-offs that allow you to solve a problem using a minimal set of resources, but compromise performance such as speed, accuracy or reliability.
- Robotics problems are different from problems in pure Artificial Intelligence, that do not deal with unreliable sensing or actuation.
- The unreliability of sensors, actuators and communication links require a probabilistic notion of the system and reason with uncertainty.
Exercises
- What kind of sensors do you need to solve the “Ratslife” game? Think both about trivial and close-to-optimal approaches.
- What devices in your home could be considered robots? Why and why not?
- Which industries have been recently revolutionized by robotics? Into which industries were robots introduced first?
- What sensors are you using when grasping an object? Enumerate them all. Which ones are absolutely necessary for good performance?
- Think about robots vacuuming your floor or mowing your lawn. Do they use any planning? Why or why not?
- What kind of sensors would you need in a car that drives completely autonomously? Think first about the kind of information that the car needs to be aware of and then discuss possible sensors that could capture this information.
- Implement a simple line-following using a robot of your choice. How does the thickness of the line affect the sensor placement on the robot? How does its curvature affect the robot’s speed?
- Implement a maze solving algorithm that uses simple wallfollowing using a robot of your choice. How does the sensor geometry affect the robot’s performance? What are the parameters that you find yourself tuning?