Author name: Shawn Ritter

This unit explores several learning methods that are used in the field of robotics. Some time is spent exploring the concept of reinforcement learning which I discussed in the previous unit, however the unit dives deeper and also covers supervisor learning as an exciting area with big potential for robotics. Reading – Chapter 21: Things

This unit has two primary topics to cover, navigation and group dynamics. In chapter 19 we will be looking at how robots might navigate a space. I expect that we will examine the problem of navigation in light of the control schemes we have discussed previously (reactive, deliberative, hybrid, behavior based) and what the advantages

This unit discusses the concept of emergent behavior in the field of robotics. Emergent behavior is the phenomena when the whole is greater than the parts. It is a characteristic of complex systems where many individual components with simple behaviours combine to create behaviour that is new and complex as a result of the interactions

This unit attempts to cover the concept of coordination for behavior based control systems. It examines how robots decide what behavior should be used to accomplish a given task when there is more than one action or behavior which might be employed. Reading- Chapter 17: Making Your Robot Behave Making decisions is a complex process,

In the last unit we looked at two opposing methods for controlling robots, in the deliberative and reaction approaches. In this section we will look into hybrid control systems and behavioral based control. Reading – Chapter 15: Think and Act Separately, In Parallel Hybrid systems attempt to merge the reactive systems with a deliberative system

To plan, or to respond? How should we build robots? Should they be programmed to look ahead and to strategize, or should they be reflexive and respond to their environment? This unit begins to look at the ramification of either strategy. Reading – Chapter 13: Think Hard, Act Later Planning behaviours are also known as

This unit covered one chapter and dealt with the question of how do robots store information about their environment. Reading – Chapter 12: What’s in your Head? This unit was primarily about representation or working memory. It was a discussion based upon the stored information which is used by an object to plan and problem

This seemed to be a fairly short unit, but I enjoyed looking into control mechanisms and I have been interested in how relevant this section was to 3D printing. Reading – Chapter 10: Stay in Control The primary subject of this chapter was on feedback control. We looked at several types of feedback control, but