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Immobile Robots
Roland Piquepaille writes "Wade Roush wrote a long and well-documented article for the Technology Review about this new concept, the immobot, short for "immobile robot." He gives different industrial examples, from NASA to the water utility in Porto Alegre, and from Toyota cars to some new Xerox photocopiers. And he looks at the programming model behind the immobots. No "heuristic" programs here, but model-based programs instead. Check this column for details." The original article has more information.
Control theory is more of a traditional engineering discipline, studied by electrical, mechanical, and industrial engineers. It takes a strong math background: calculus, linear and nonlinear equations, tensors, Laplace and Z transforms. There isn't yet "Control Systems for Dummies", although some friends of mine are trying to change that by writing a controls curriculum, accompanied by a parts kit, for bright high-school students.
The path to low-level AI (moving around, not bumping into stuff, not falling down) may lie in the region between model-based control and machine learning. That region is now open for business, due to cheap compute power. Control systems used to be powered by computers with well under 1 MIPS; most of them still are. With cheap gigaflops available, approaches that were once far out of reach can be used. Real-time stereo vision finally works, and is about to get cheap. Stability enhancement systems for cars are quite impressive today. Self-balancing machines, from the Segway to the Asimo, are showing up as products.
Mobile robots, which have been sluggish machines for decades, typically have rather low-performance control systems. The DARPA LA to Las Vegas robot race may change that.