| Date: 30 April 2011, 05:09
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The creation of a truly autonomous and intelligent system—one that can sense,
learn from, and interact with its environment, one that can integrate seamlessly
into the day-to-day lives of humans — has ever been the motivating factor
behind the huge body of work on artificial intelligence, control theory and
robotics, autonomous (land, sea, and air) vehicles, and numerous other disciplines.
The technology involved is highly complex and multidisciplinary, posing
immense challenges for researchers at both the module and system integration
levels. Despite the innumerable hurdles, the research community has, as a
whole, made great progress in recent years. This is evidenced by technological
leaps and innovations in the areas of sensing and sensor fusion, modeling and
control, map building and path planning, artificial intelligence and decision
making, and system architecture design, spurred on by advances in related
areas of communications, machine processing, networking, and information
technology.
Autonomous systems are gradually becoming a part of our way of life,
whether we consciously perceive it or not. The increased use of intelligent
robotic systems in current indoor and outdoor applications bears testimony
to the efforts made by researchers on all fronts. Mobile systems have greater
autonomy than before, and new applications abound — ranging from factory
transport systems, airport transport systems, road/vehicular systems, to
military applications, automated patrol systems, homeland security surveillance,
and rescue operations. While most conventional autonomous systems
are self-contained in the sense that all their sensors, actuators, and computers
are on board, it is envisioned that more and more will evolve to become open networked
systems with distributed processing power, sensors (e.g., GPS, cameras,
microphones, and landmarks), and actuators.
It is generally agreed that an autonomous system consists primarily of the
following four distinct yet interconnected modules:
(i) Sensors and Sensor Fusion
(ii) Modeling and Control
(iii) Map Building and Path Planning
(iv) Decision Making and Autonomy
These modules are integrated and influenced by the system architecture design
for different applications.
vii
© 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
viii Preface
This edited book tries for the first time to provide a comprehensive treatment
of autonomous mobile systems, ranging from related fundamental technical
issues to practical system integration and applications. The chapters are written
by some of the leading researchers and practitioners working in this field
today. Readers will be presented with a complete picture of autonomous mobile
systems at the systems level, and will also gain a better understanding of the
technological and theoretical aspects involved within each module that composes
the overall system. Five distinct parts of the book, each consisting of
several chapters, emphasize the different aspects of autonomous mobile systems,
starting from sensors and control, and gradually moving up the cognitive
ladder to planning and decision making, finally ending with the integration of
the four modules in application case studies of autonomous systems.
chapters treat in detail the operation and uses of various sensors that are crucial
for the operation of autonomous systems. Sensors provide robots with the capability
to perceive the world, and effective utilization is of utmost importance.
The chapters also consider various state-of-the art techniques for the fusion
and utilization of various sensing information for feature detection and position
estimation. Vision sensors, RADAR, GPS and INS, and landmarks are
themselves in the form amenable to analysis as holonomic systems, and the
importance of nonholonomic modeling and control is evident. The four chapters
these highly complicated systems, focusing on discontinuous control, unified
neural fuzzy control, adaptive control with actuator dynamics, and the control
of car-like vehicles for vehicle tracking maneuvers, respectively.
of autonomous systems. This builds on technologies in sensing and control to
discusses the specifics of building an accurate map of the environment, using
either single or multiple robots, with which localization and motion planning
can take place. Probabilistic motion planning as a robust and efficient planning
chapters in this part treat in detail the issues of representing knowledge, high
level planning, and coordination mechanisms that together define the cognitive
capabilities of autonomous systems. These issues are crucial for the development
of intelligent mobile systems that are able to reason and manipulate
© 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
discussed in detail in Chapters 1 to 4 respectively.
of this part, Chapters 5 to 8, thus present novel contributions to the control of
further improve the intelligence and autonomy of mobile robots. Chapter 9
scheme is examined in Chapter 10. Action coordination and formation control
available information. Specifically, Chapters 12 to 14 present topics pertaining
Modeling and control issues concerning nonholonomic systems are disof
multiple robots are investigated in Chapter 11.
Decision making and autonomy, the highest levels in the hierarchy of
The first part of the book is dedicated to sensors and sensor fusion. The four
cussed in the second part of the book. Real-world systems seldom present
The third part of the book covers the map building and path planning aspects
abstraction, are examined in detail in the fourth part of the book. The three
Preface ix
to knowledge representation and decision making, algorithms for planning
under uncertainties, and the behavior-based coordination of multiple robots.
In the final part of the book, we present a collection of chapters that deal
with the system integration and engineering aspects of large-scale autonomous
systems. These are usually considered as necessary steps in making new
technologies operational and are relatively neglected in the academic community.
However, there is no doubt that system integration plays a vital role
in the successful development and deployment of autonomous mobile systems.
hierarchical system architecture that encompasses and links the various (higher
and lower level) components to form an intelligent, complex system.
We sincerely hope that this book will provide the reader with a cohesive
truly intelligent autonomous robots. Although the treatment of the topics is
by no means exhaustive, we hope to give the readers a broad-enough view of
the various aspects involved in the development of autonomous systems. The
authors have, however, provided a splendid list of references at the end of each
chapter, and interested readers are encouraged to refer to these references for
more information. This book represents the amalgamation of the truly excellent
work and effort of all the contributing authors, and could not have come to
fruition without their contributions. Finally, we are also immensely grateful
to Marsha Pronin, Michael Slaughter, and all others at CRC Press (Taylor &
Francis Group) for their efforts in making this project a success.
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