Maja Mataric: Social Robots

Reading Assignments:

1) Maja J Mataric, "Behavior-Based Robotics", in the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences, Robert A. Wilson and Frank C. Keil, eds., MIT Press, April 1999, 74-77. found at: http://robotics.usc.edu/~maja/publications/mitcs.ps.gz

2) Brian Gerkey and Maja J Mataric, "Sold! Auction methods for multi-robot coordination", to appear in IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 2002. found at: http://robotics.usc.edu/~gerkey/research/papers/tra01.ps.gz OR http://robotics.usc.edu/~gerkey/research/papers/tra01.pdf

Three questions: (pick one and answer it in a one-page essay that
you will hand in to Prof. Itti the monday following the talk, at noon
in class):

1) Give the key features of the four basic robot control
architectures, i.e., list at least one key advantage and one key
disadvantage of each.  What are their key differences?

2) Which of the four basic robot control architectures is/are (you can
list up to two) most relevant for multi-robot coordination.  Explain
your answer.

3) Give two advantages and two disadvantages of auction-based
coordination for multi-robot control.  Explain each briefly.

For those interested, here are some additional references:

Maja J Mataric, "Behavior-Based Control: Examples from Navigation, earning, and Group Behavior", Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, special issue on Software Architectures for Physical Agents, 9(2-3), H. Hexmoor, I. Horswill, and D. Kortenkamp, eds., 1997, 323-336. found at: http://robotics.usc.edu/~maja/publications/jetai-arch.ps.gz

Maja J Mataric, "Learning Social Behavior", Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 20, 1997, 191-204. found at: http://robotics.usc.edu/~maja/publications/ras-rolf.ps.gz