Keynote: Malik Ghallab on Planning Technology in Robotics
In his Wednesday Keynote, Malik Ghallab gave An Overview of Planning Technology in Robotics
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He started with an overview of the current state of Service Robots, Field Robots and Personal Robots. The mindmap explains the three different kinds of robots. Click for the full size version.
Ghallab stated that today the hardware of robots is very well developed while the software still is relatively poor. The most important bottlenecks are the sensor-motor functions and learning capabilities.
Ghallab went on to describe different planning issues in robots, such as Path and Motion Planning ("how to I get from A to B?"), Perception Planning ("What information do I need? How can I get it? Which sensors shall I use?"), Navigation Planning ("Where am I? What are the surroundings like?"), Manipulation Planning ("Which Sensors/Motors shall I use to manipulate X?"), Communication Planning ("When shall I report what? When shall I query for information?") and Task and Mission Planning ("What shall I do now? What later? How shall I allocate my resources?").
The problem with planning in robotics is that robots work in an open-ended, changing environment. There is uncertainty in models and data and online input. Redundancy in the sensors/motors is necessary and there are limited resources.
Ghallab explained different concepts of localisation and locomotion and compared their advantaged and disadvantages. His paper deals with the problem of how to decide between different combinations of planning strategies.
Malik Ghallab: An Overview of Planning Technology in Robotics. GI Jahrestagung (1) 2004: 28-48