1.6: Exercises

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

1. What kind of sensors do you need to solve the “Ratslife” game? Think both about trivial and close-to-optimal approaches.
2. What devices in your home could be considered robots? Why and why not?
3. Which industries have been recently revolutionized by robotics? Into which industries were robots introduced first?
4. What sensors are you using when grasping an object? Enumerate them all. Which ones are absolutely necessary for good performance?
5. Think about robots vacuuming your floor or mowing your lawn. Do they use any planning? Why or why not?
6. 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.
7. 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?
8. 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?

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