Subsumption architecture is a reactive robotic architecture heavily associated with behavior-based robotics which was very popular in the 1980s and 90s. The term was introduced by Rodney Brooks and colleagues in 1986. Subsumption has been widely influential in autonomous robotics and elsewhere in real-time AI.
BEAM robotics is a style of robotics that primarily uses simple analogue circuits, such as comparators, instead of a microprocessor in order to produce an unusually simple design. While not as flexible as microprocessor based robotics, BEAM robotics can be robust and efficient in performing the task for which it was designed.
Bio-inspired computing, short for biologically inspired computing, is a field of study which seeks to solve computer science problems using models of biology. It relates to connectionism, social behavior, and emergence. Within computer science, bio-inspired computing relates to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Bio-inspired computing is a major subset of natural computation.
Neat and scruffy are two contrasting approaches to artificial intelligence (AI) research. The distinction was made in the 70s and was a subject of discussion until the middle 80s. In the 1990s and 21st century AI research adopted "neat" approaches almost exclusively and these have proven to be the most successful.
Behavior-based robotics (BBR) or behavioral robotics is an approach in robotics that focuses on robots that are able to exhibit complex-appearing behaviors despite little internal variable state to model its immediate environment, mostly gradually correcting its actions via sensory-motor links.
Roomba is a series of autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners sold by iRobot. Introduced in September 2002, they have a set of sensors that enable them to navigate the floor area of a home. These sensors can detect the presence of obstacles, particularly dirty spots on the floor, and steep drops.
Rodney Allen Brooks is an Australian roboticist, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, author, and robotics entrepreneur, most known for popularizing the actionist approach to robotics. He was a Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is a founder and former Chief Technical Officer of iRobot and co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of Rethink Robotics and currently is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Robust.AI.
iCub is a 1 metre tall open source robotics humanoid robot testbed for research into human cognition and artificial intelligence.
Embodied cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of research, the aim of which is to explain the mechanisms underlying intelligent behavior. It comprises three main methodologies: the modeling of psychological and biological systems in a holistic manner that considers the mind and body as a single entity; the formation of a common set of general principles of intelligent behavior; and the experimental use of robotic agents in controlled environments.
Legged robots are a type of mobile robot which use articulated limbs, such as leg mechanisms, to provide locomotion. They are more versatile than wheeled robots and can traverse many different terrains, though these advantages require increased complexity and power consumption. Legged robots often imitate legged animals, such as humans or insects, in an example of biomimicry.
Nouvelle artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to artificial intelligence pioneered in the 1980s by Rodney Brooks, who was then part of MIT artificial intelligence laboratory. Nouvelle AI differs from classical AI by aiming to produce robots with intelligence levels similar to insects. Researchers believe that intelligence can emerge organically from simple behaviors as these intelligences interacted with the "real world," instead of using the constructed worlds which symbolic AIs typically needed to have programmed into them.
A hierarchical control system (HCS) is a form of control system in which a set of devices and governing software is arranged in a hierarchical tree. When the links in the tree are implemented by a computer network, then that hierarchical control system is also a form of networked control system.
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics, electronics, bioengineering, computer engineering, control engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc.
Some of the research that is conducted in the field of psychology is more "fundamental" than the research conducted in the applied psychological disciplines, and does not necessarily have a direct application. The subdisciplines within psychology that can be thought to reflect a basic-science orientation include biological psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and so on. Research in these subdisciplines is characterized by methodological rigor. The concern of psychology as a basic science is in understanding the laws and processes that underlie behavior, cognition, and emotion. Psychology as a basic science provides a foundation for applied psychology. Applied psychology, by contrast, involves the application of psychological principles and theories yielded up by the basic psychological sciences; these applications are aimed at overcoming problems or promoting well-being in areas such as mental and physical health and education.
The 4D/RCS Reference Model Architecture is a reference model for military unmanned vehicles on how their software components should be identified and organized.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to robotics:
A robotic vacuum cleaner, sometimes called a robovac or a roomba as a generic trademark, is an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner which has a limited vacuum floor cleaning system combined with sensors and robotic drives with programmable controllers and cleaning routines. Early designs included manual operation via remote control and a "self-drive" mode which allowed the machine to clean autonomously without human control. Some designs use spinning brushes to reach tight corners, and some include a number of cleaning features along with the vacuuming feature. More recent models use artificial intelligence and deep learning for better mapping, object identification and event-based cleaning.
In artificial intelligence research, the situated approach builds agents that are designed to behave effectively successfully in their environment. This requires designing AI "from the bottom-up" by focussing on the basic perceptual and motor skills required to survive. The situated approach gives a much lower priority to abstract reasoning or problem-solving skills.
LAURON is a six-legged walking robot, which is being developed at the Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe (FZI) in Germany. The mechanics and the movements of the robot are biologically-inspired, mimicking the stick insect Carausius Morosus. The development of the LAURON walking robot started with basic research in field of six-legged locomotion in the early 1990s and led to the first robot, called LAURON. In the year 1994, this robot was presented to public at the CeBIT in Hanover. This first LAURON generation was, in contrast to the current generation, controlled by an artificial neural network, hence the robot's German name: LAUfROboter Neuronal gesteuert. The current generation LARUON V was finished in 2013.
Elmer and Elsie were two electronic robots that were built in the late 1940s by neurobiologist and cybernetician William Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history that were programmed to "think" the way biological brains do and meant to have free will. Elmer and Elsie were often labeled as tortoises because of how they were shaped and the manner in which they moved. They were capable of phototaxis which is the movement that occurs in response to light stimulus.
