Methods by which robots can learn control laws that enable real-time reactivity using dynamical systems; with applications and exercises. This book presents a wealth of machine learning techniques to make the control of robots more flexible and safe when interacting with humans. It introduces a set of control laws that enable reactivity using dynamical systems, a widely used method for solving motion-planning problems in robotics. These control approaches can replan in milliseconds to adapt to new environmental constraints and offer safe and compliant control of forces in contact. The techniques offer theoretical advantages, including convergence to a goal, non-penetration of obstacles, and passivity. The coverage of learning begins with low-level control parameters and progresses to higher-level competencies composed of combinations of skills. Learning for Adaptive and Reactive Robot Control is designed for graduate-level courses in robotics, with chapters that proceed from fundamentals to more advanced content. Techniques covered include learning from demonstration, optimization, and reinforcement learning, and using dynamical systems in learning control laws, trajectory planning, and methods for compliant and force control . Features for teaching in each chapter: applications, which range from arm manipulators to whole-body control of humanoid robots; pencil-and-paper and programming exercises; lecture videos, slides, and MATLAB code examples available on the author’s website . an eTextbook platform website offering protected material[EPS2] for instructors including solutions.

An introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that reviews over 300 current systems and examines the underlying technology. Autonomous robots are intelligent machines capable of performing tasks in the world by themselves, without explicit human control. Examples range from autonomous helicopters to Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner. In this book, George Bekey offers an introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that can be used both in the classroom and as a reference for industry professionals. He surveys the hardware implementations of more than 300 current systems, reviews some of their application areas, and examines the underlying technology, including control, architectures, learning, manipulation, grasping, navigation, and mapping. Living systems can be considered the prototypes of autonomous systems, and Bekey explores the biological inspiration that forms the basis of many recent developments in robotics. He also discusses robot control issues and the design of control architectures. After an overview of the field that introduces some of its fundamental concepts, the book presents background material on hardware, control (from both biological and engineering perspectives), software architecture, and robot intelligence. It then examines a broad range of implementations and applications, including locomotion (wheeled, legged, flying, swimming, and crawling robots), manipulation (both arms and hands), localization, navigation, and mapping. The many case studies and specific applications include robots built for research, industry, and the military, among them underwater robotic vehicles, walking machines with four, six, and eight legs, and the famous humanoid robots Cog, Kismet, ASIMO, and QRIO. The book concludes with reflections on the future of robotics—the potential benefits as well as the possible dangers that may arise from large numbers of increasingly intelligent and autonomous robots.

This book provides state-of-the-art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the area of mobile robotics and associated support technologies. The book contains peer reviewed articles presented at the CLAWAR 2012 conference. Robots are no longer confined to industrial and manufacturing environments. A great deal of interest is invested in the use of robots outside the factory environment. The CLAWAR conference series, established as a high profile international event, acts as a platform for dissemination of research and development findings and supports such a trend to address the current interest in mobile robotics to meet the needs of mankind in various sectors of the society. These include personal care, public health, services in the domestic, public and industrial environments. The editors of the book have extensive research experience and publications in the area of robotics in general and in mobile robotics specifically, and their experience is reflected in editing the contents of the book.

This book covers the most attractive problem in robot control, dealing with the direct interaction between a robot and a dynamic environment, including the human-robot physical interaction. It provides comprehensive theoretical and experimental coverage of interaction control problems, starting from the mathematical modeling of robots interacting with complex dynamic environments, and proceeding to various concepts for interaction control design and implementation algorithms at different control layers. Focusing on the learning principle, it also shows the application of new and advanced learning algorithms for robotic contact tasks.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a complicated science that combines philosophy, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, mathematics and logic (logicism), economics, computer science, computability, and software. Meanwhile, robotics is an engineering field that compliments AI. There can be situations where AI can function without a robot (e.g., Turing Test) and robotics without AI (e.g., teleoperation), but in many cases, each technology requires each other to exhibit a complete system: having "smart" robots and AI being able to control its interactions (i.e., effectors) with its environment. This book provides a complete history of computing, AI, and robotics from its early development to state‐of‐the‐art technology, providing a roadmap of these complicated and constantly evolving subjects. Divided into two volumes covering the progress of symbolic logic and the explosion in learning/deep learning in natural language and perception, this first volume investigates the coming together of AI (the mind) and robotics (the body), and discusses the state of AI today. Key Features: Provides a complete overview of the topic of AI, starting with philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and logicism, and extending to the action of the robots and AI needed for a futuristic society Provides a holistic view of AI, and touches on all the misconceptions and tangents to the technologies through taking a systematic approach Provides a glossary of terms, list of notable people, and extensive references Provides the interconnections and history of the progress of technology for over 100 years as both the hardware (Moore’s Law, GPUs) and software, i.e., generative AI, have advanced Intended as a complete reference, this book is useful to undergraduate and postgraduate students of computing, as well as the general reader. It can also be used as a textbook by course convenors. If you only had one book on AI and robotics, this set would be the first reference to acquire and learn about the theory and practice.

This book contains seventeen contributions in the form of independent chapters, covering a broad range of topics related to human–robot interaction at physical and cognitive levels. Each chapter represents a novel piece of work presented during HFR 2022 by researchers in the different areas of robotics, where new theories, methodologies, technologies, challenges, and empirical and experimental studies are discussed. Additionally, this compilation is rich in viewpoints due to the multidisciplinary nature of its authors. Hence, this book represents an excellent opportunity for academics, researchers, and industry partners to get acquainted with the most recent work on human–robot interaction.

A comprehensive introduction to the mathematical foundations of movement and actuation that apply equally to animals and machines. This textbook offers a computational framework for the sensorimotor stage of development as applied to robotics. Much work in developmental robotics is based on ad hoc examples, without a full computational basis. This book's comprehensive and complete treatment fills the gap, drawing on the principal mechanisms of development in the first year of life to introduce what is essentially an operating system for developing robots. The goal is to apply principles of development to robot systems that not only achieve new levels of performance but also provide evidence for scientific theories of human development.

The current state of the art in cognitive robotics, covering the challenges of building AI-powered intelligent robots inspired by natural cognitive systems. A novel approach to building AI-powered intelligent robots takes inspiration from the way natural cognitive systems—in humans, animals, and biological systems—develop intelligence by exploiting the full power of interactions between body and brain, the physical and social environment in which they live, and phylogenetic, developmental, and learning dynamics. This volume reports on the current state of the art in cognitive robotics, offering the first comprehensive coverage of building robots inspired by natural cognitive systems. Contributors first provide a systematic definition of cognitive robotics and a history of developments in the field. They describe in detail five main approaches: developmental, neuro, evolutionary, swarm, and soft robotics. They go on to consider methodologies and concepts, treating topics that include commonly used cognitive robotics platforms and robot simulators, biomimetic skin as an example of a hardware-based approach, machine-learning methods, and cognitive architecture. Finally, they cover the behavioral and cognitive capabilities of a variety of models, experiments, and applications, looking at issues that range from intrinsic motivation and perception to robot consciousness. Cognitive Robotics is aimed at an interdisciplinary audience, balancing technical details and examples for the computational reader with theoretical and experimental findings for the empirical scientist.

An introduction to neurorobotics that presents approaches and design principles for developing intelligent autonomous systems grounded in biology and neuroscience. Neurorobotics is an interdisciplinary field that draws on artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences, computer science, engineering, psychology, neuroscience, and robotics. Because the brain is closely coupled to the body and situated in the environment, neurorobots—autonomous systems modeled after some aspect of the brain—offer a powerful tool for studying neural function and may also be a means for developing autonomous systems with intelligence that rivals that of biological organisms. This textbook introduces approaches and design principles for developing intelligent autonomous systems grounded in biology and neuroscience. It is written for anyone interested in learning about this topic and can be used in cognitive robotics courses for students in psychology, cognitive science, and computer science. Neurorobotics covers the background and foundations of the field, with information on early neurorobots, relevant principles of neuroscience, learning rules and mechanisms, and reinforcement learning and prediction; neurorobot design principles grounded in neuroscience and principles of neuroscience research; and examples of neurorobots for navigation, developmental robotics, and social robots, presented with the cognitive science and neuroscience background that inspired them. A supplementary website offers videos, robot simulations, and links to software repositories with neurorobot examples.

Tactile Sensing, Skill Learning and Robotic Dexterous Manipulation focuses on cross-disciplinary lines of research and groundbreaking research ideas in three research lines: tactile sensing, skill learning and dexterous control. The book introduces recent work about human dexterous skill representation and learning, along with discussions of tactile sensing and its applications on unknown objects' property recognition and reconstruction. Sections also introduce the adaptive control schema and its learning by imitation and exploration. Other chapters describe the fundamental part of relevant research, paying attention to the connection among different fields and showing the state-of-the-art in related branches. The book summarizes the different approaches and discusses the pros and cons of each. Chapters not only describe the research but also include basic knowledge that can help readers understand the proposed work, making it an excellent resource for researchers and professionals who work in the robotics industry, haptics and in machine learning. - Provides a review of tactile perception and the latest advances in the use of robotic dexterous manipulation - Presents the most detailed work on synthesizing intelligent tactile perception, skill learning and adaptive control - Introduces recent work on human's dexterous skill representation and learning and the adaptive control schema and its learning by imitation and exploration - Reveals and illustrates how robots can improve dexterity by modern tactile sensing, interactive perception, learning and adaptive control approaches