Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robots: Successes and Challenges

Transcription

1 Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robots: Successes and Challenges David Kortenkamp NASA Johnson Space Center Metrica Inc./TRACLabs Houton TX

2 Outline Where we ve been Previous mobile robot competitions Contributions to the state-of-the-art Where we are Status checklist Challenges to the AI community Where we are going 2000 Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition

3 The First AAAI Mobile Robot Competition (San Jose CA 1992) Large arena with fixed obstacles Robot needed to find and visit 10 poles Teams could mark poles in any way they wanted Contributions Sonar-based obstacle avoidance Assessment Robots could move w/o hitting things Robots could find large, marked objects

4 Second AAAI Mobile Robot Competition (DC, 1993) Office-like environment Robots modifying environment Contributions Three-layer architecture (Erann Gat, JPL) Assessment Office navigation still unsolved Start of real-world tasks

5 Third AAAI Mobile Robot Competition (Seattle, 1994) Office building environment is continued Mobile manipulation is introduced Contributions Successful multi-robot strategy (Georgia Tech) Probabilistic office navigation (Stanford) Assessment Office navigation more robust Distributed multi-robots are fast

6 Fourth AAAI Mobile Robot Competition (Montreal, 1995) Office navigation is extended with human interaction Mobile manipulation with ability to distinguish objects (trash vs. recycle) Contributions Color vision Wheelchair applications Assessment Non-trivial vision becomes possible

7 Fifth AAAI Mobile Robot Competition (Portland, 1996) Office navigation with occupancy detection Mobile manipulation of moving objects Alan Alda! Contributions Fast color vision POMDP navigation techniques Assessment Office navigation is solved

8 Sixth AAAI Mobile Robot Competition (Providence, 1997) Real-world tasks (vacuuming, search) Direct interaction with AAAI attendees (serving hors d oeuvres) Contributions Multi-media interfaces Entertaining robots Assessment Human-robot interaction still young

9 Seventh AAAI Mobile Robot Competition (Madison WI, 1998) Robots move out of the arena Hors d oeuvres is continued Sony robot dogs make appearance Contributions AAAI Best Paper to Thrun et al for museum tour robot based on software displayed in previous competitions Assessment Human-robot interaction making progress

10 Eighth AAAI Mobile Robot Competition (Orlando, 1999) No arena at all, robots roam through conference hall on scavenger hunts Hors d oeuvres competition a big hit Contributions Introduced a challenge competition Assessment Continued improvement in hors d oeuvres serving

11 Y2K: Where are we? What is the current state-of-the-art? What are the remaining challenges? CMU and NASA take the Nomad mobile robot to Antarctica in January 2000 to search for meteorites

12 State-of-the-art Mapping and Navigation Obstacle avoidance Office building navigation Public navigation (with assistance) Map construction (including 3D) using sonar and laser Challenges Outdoor navigation (even with GPS) Vision-based navigation

13 State-of-the-art Robot Vision Color vision for object recognition Obstacle avoidance and cliff detection Autonomous highway driving Active stereo vision for tracking Challenges Object segmentation Robust landmark discovery and recognition

14 State-of-the-art Mobile Manipulation Stand-alone manipulators on mobile bases Uncoordinated base and arm motion Challenges Coordinated base and arm motion Multi-arm robots Eye-hand coordination

15 Human-Robot Interaction State-of-the-art Simple tracking and gesture recognition Face recognition under ideal circumstances COTS voice recognition Challenges Discourse management tied to task context Learning from humans Adjustable autonomy

16 State-of-the-art Control Architectures Layered architectures to integrate reactive and deliberative components Robust execution of procedures Challenges Architectures with learning built-in Sharing components ( plug and play ) Adjustable autonomy Validation and verification

17 State-of-the-art Homogeneous robots Multiple Robots Divide-and-conquer tasks Challenges Architectures for coordination of autonomous, heterogeneous robots On-the-fly teaming of robots Distributed sensing Tasks that require multiple robots

18 Challenges to the AI Community Planning Planners that can take advantage of underlying robust execution systems Mixed-initiative planning with robots Learning Fast, on-line learners that handle uncertainty Improving off-line models from data Natural Language Discourse tied to task contexts and agent actions

19 Challenges (continued) Knowledge Representation Representing perceptual information Moving knowledge between continuous and discrete (or symbolic) representations Applications Apply known mobile robot results to other domains that have similar characteristics, I.e., immobots (Williams & Nayak 1996) Use mobile robots!

20 Goals The 2000 AAAI Mobile Robot Contest and Exhibition Foster the sharing of research ideas and technology Allow research groups to showcase their achievements Encourage students to enter the fields of robots and AI Increase awareness of the field Alan Schultz, Chair

21 Contest Events Urban Search and Rescue Hors d oeuvres Lisa Meeden, Event Chair Challenge Tucker Balch, Event Chair Exhibition Marc Bohlen and Vandi Verma, Event Chairs Plus, Botball and Robot Building Lab

22 Urban Search and Rescue Robots must enter fallen structure and search for victims Robots judged on Number of victims found Relaying location of victims and hazards Communicating with victims Innovative technology No teleoperation

23 Hors d oeuvres Robots serve hors d oeuvres to conference attendees at the reception Robots judged subjectively by a panel for: Ability to serve food Interaction with attendees Manipulation Sensing modes

24 Challenge Robot must register and attend AAAI with no a priori information Judges will look for technical innovation Components include: Start at front door Navigate to registration (look at signs or ask directions) Register (stand in line, say name) Attend talk Task pushes state-of-the-art

25 Exhibition Demonstrations of robot technology that does not fit within the contests Scheduled demonstration times Exhibition themes include: Learning by imitation (USC) Learning by observation (Georgia Tech) Multi-robot negotiation Interaction with humans Intelligent wheelchairs (U Texas) Enabling technologies

26 Botball High school robotics building and programming competition Over 150 teams participated Finals held at AAAI high school teams competing August 1 and 2 (finals at 3:00) Organized by David Miller of the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics and the University of Oklahoma

27 Sponsors DARPA Office of Naval Research Naval Research Laboratory AAAI