General
Internally, use the Stud.IP system to get additional information and material!
Abstract
To be not just mobile, but to also be able to act in a goal-directed way, most mobile robots have to know where they are in the first place, i.e., they have to self-localize either in some map or relative to where they have previously been. Then, they have to determine where to go next, and along which path, making sure they actually follow this path more or less. Next, they have to make sure they avoid collisions with static or moving obstacles. All this is summarized under the term Robot Navigation. We will broaden the topic a little, adding the related functionality of map building, which means to come up with a map (of which there may be many different formats) of the environment made from scratch or generated by updating prior knowledge.
The seminar will cover the topic by means of ten papers plus their background material, so there are ten presentation slots.
Note to Prospective Participants
In addition to covering these ten papers, there will be much emphasis on learning how to present such material, both orally and written. There will be an introductory part by myself about how to give an oral presentation and about how to write a seminar paper (which is in many respects not much different from writing a bachelor or master thesis). Each and every seminar paper written by a participant will be reviewed by two other participants who have to provide a peer review on the presentation (clarity, style etc.). That means, all participants have to present their respective topics, give a talk, and write two reviews. The language to be used in all cases is English.
Each talk is centered around a particular paper. It is expected that additional material (e.g., papers from the references, recent developments concerning the paper topic if the original paper is some years old) is considered for deepening and broadening the paper presentation. If in doubt, ask your instructor. To help you find such material, we will locally install the on-line proceedings of a very recent robotics conference here shortly.
Each talk should take 30-45 minutes plus discussion/questions. Your seminar paper should typically be around ten pages long, applying common-sense formatting (DIN A4, 10-12pt font, regular text margins). A particular concise presentation or usage of particularly many drawings and figures may cause exceptions to that default.
Seminar Topics/Papers
- Gyrodometry.
- J. Borenstein, L. Feng: Gyrodometry: A New Method for Combining Data from Gyros and Odometry in Mobile Robots. Proc. ICRA-1996, pp.423-428.
(citeseer link)
- Laser Histograms.
- G. Weiß, Ch. Wetzler, E. v. Puttkamer: Keeping Track of Position and Orientation of Moving Indoor Systems by Correlation of Range-Finder Scans.
Proc. IROS-1994.
- Registering Scans in Maps.
- I.J. Cox. Blanche: An Experiment in Guidance and Navigation of an Autonomous Robot Vehicle. IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation, 2:193-204, 1991.
- The IDC algorithm. (Topic taken)
- F. Lu, E. Milios: Robot Pose Estimation in Unknown Environments by Matching 2D Range Scans. CVPR94, S.935-938, 1994.
(citeseer link)
- Markov Localization. (Topic taken)
- D. Fox, W. Burgard, S. Thrun: Active Markov localization for mobile robots. J. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 25:195-207, 1998.
(citeseer link)
- Monte Carlo Localization. (Topic taken)
- D. Fox, W. Burgard, F. Dellaert, S. Thrun: Monte Carlo Localization: Efficient Position Estimation for Mobile Robots. Proc. AAAI-99, pp.343-349, 1999.
(citeseer link)
- Simulteneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). (Topic taken)
- S. Thrun, D. Fox, W. Burgard: A Probabilistic Approach to Concurrent Mapping and Localization for Mobile Robots. J. Machine Learning, 31:29-53, 1998.
(citeseer link)
- Architectures I: SAPHIRA. (Topic taken)
- A. Saffiotti, K. Konolige, E. H. Ruspini: A multivalued-logic approach to integrating planning and control. J. Artificial Intelligence 76:481-526, 1995.
(citeseer link)
A. Saffiotti: The uses of fuzzy logic in autonomous robot navigation. J. Soft Computing 1:180-197, 1997.
- Architectures II: The LAAS Architecture.
- R. Alami, R. Chatila, S. Fleury, M. Ghallab, F. Ingrand: An Architecture for Autonomy. Int. J. Robotics Research 17(4):315-337, 1998.
(citeseer link)
- A Demo Application: Museum Tourguide Robots. (Topic taken)
- W. Burgard, A.B. Cremers, D. Fox, D. Hä"hnel, G. Lakemeyer, D. Schulz, W. Steiner, S. Thrun: Experiences with an Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot. J. Artificial Intelligence 114:3-55, 1999.
(citeseer link)
K. Arras, R. Philippsen, N. Tomatis, M. de Battista, M. Schilt, R. Siegwart: A Navigation Framework for Multiple Mobile Robots and its Application at the Expo.02 Exhibition. Proc. ICRA-2003.
Background Reading (mandatory)
- S.J. Russell, P. Norvig: "Artificial Intelligence. A Modern Approach", 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall, 2003, Chapter 25: Robotics (written by Sebastian Thrun)
- I. Parberry: A Guide for New Referees in Theoretical Computer Science. Information and Computation, Vol. 112, No. 1, pp. 96-116, 1994 [Download PS]
WWW-Resources
- Russell/Norvig's Web Site (AIMA)
- Justin Zobel's Web page "Guides for technical writing", comprising links to texts (including a book by himself) about scientific writing in Computer Science and nearby field, giving technical presentations, scientific ethics, and more.
- The local on-line copy of the IROS-04 proceedings. (Make sure your Web browser opens the PDF document in the browser window!)
| Last changed: 2004-10-26 |
