TY - GEN
T1 - Sloppy motors, flaky sensors, and virtual dirt
T2 - 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA'07
AU - O'Kane, Jason M.
AU - LaValle, Steven M.
PY - 2007/11/27
Y1 - 2007/11/27
N2 - Robots must complete their tasks in spite of unreliable actuators and limited, noisy sensing. In this paper, we consider the information requirements of such tasks. What sensing and actuation abilities are needed to complete a given task? Are some robot systems provably "more powerful" than others? Can we find meaningful equivalence classes of robot systems? This line of research is inspired by the theory of computation, which has produced similar results for abstract computing machines. The basic idea is a dominance relation over robot systems that formalizes the idea that some robots are stronger than others. We show that this definition is directly related to the robots' ability to complete tasks. Our prior work in this area assumes perfect control and sensing, requires that the robot begin with a single fixed initial condition within a known environment, and models of time as a sequence of variable-length discrete stages, rather than as a continuum. In this paper, we substantially improve upon that earlier work by addressing these problems.
AB - Robots must complete their tasks in spite of unreliable actuators and limited, noisy sensing. In this paper, we consider the information requirements of such tasks. What sensing and actuation abilities are needed to complete a given task? Are some robot systems provably "more powerful" than others? Can we find meaningful equivalence classes of robot systems? This line of research is inspired by the theory of computation, which has produced similar results for abstract computing machines. The basic idea is a dominance relation over robot systems that formalizes the idea that some robots are stronger than others. We show that this definition is directly related to the robots' ability to complete tasks. Our prior work in this area assumes perfect control and sensing, requires that the robot begin with a single fixed initial condition within a known environment, and models of time as a sequence of variable-length discrete stages, rather than as a continuum. In this paper, we substantially improve upon that earlier work by addressing these problems.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=36348930545&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/ROBOT.2007.364106
DO - 10.1109/ROBOT.2007.364106
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:36348930545
SN - 1424406021
SN - 9781424406029
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
SP - 4084
EP - 4089
BT - 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA'07
Y2 - 10 April 2007 through 14 April 2007
ER -