Syllabus of Readings for Complex Adaptive Systems
and Agent-Based Computational Economics:

3. Robotics

Last Updated: 7 February 2005

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Iowa State University

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3. Robotics

• J. S. Albus, Brains, Behavior, and Robotics, BYTE Books, a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill, 1988.

• Ronald C. Arkin, Behavior-Based Robotics, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, June 1998, ISBN 0-262-01165-4.
  Abstract (from the book blurb): "This introduction to the principles, design, and practice of intelligent behavior-based autonomous robotic systems is the first true survey of this robotics field. The author presents the tools and techniques central to the development of this class of systems in a clear and thorough manner. Following a discussion of the relevant biological and psychological models of behavior, he covers the use of knowledge and learning in autonomous robots, behavior-based and hybrid robot architectures, modular perception, robot colonies, and future trends in robot intelligence. The text throughout refers to actual implemented robots and includes many pictures and descriptions of hardware, making it clear that these are not abstract simulations, but real machines capable of perception, cognition, and action."

  A. G. Brooks, J. Gray, G. Hoffman, A. Lockerd, H. Lee, and C. Breazeal, "Robot's Play: Interactive Games with Sociable Machines" (pdf), ACM Computers in Entertainment, 2(3), 2004, 1-18.

  Absract: Personal robots for human entertainment form a new class of computer-based entertainment that is beginning to become commercially and computationally practical. We expect that the principal manifestation of the robots' entertainment capabilities will be socially interactive game playing. We describe this form of gaming and summarize our current efforts in this direction on our lifelike, expressive, autonomous humanoid robot. Our focus is on teaching the robot via playful interaction using natural social gesture and language. We detail this in terms of two broad categories: teaching as play and teaching with play.

  Rodney Allen Brooks, Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us, Pantheon Books, 260 pp., February 2002. ISBN: 0-375-42079-7.

  Abstract (from the publisher): "(This book) explores the startling reciprocal connection between humans and their technological brethren, and explains how this relationship is being redefined as humans develop increasingly complex machines. The impetus to build machines that exhibit lifelike behaviors stretches back centuries, but for the last fifteen years much of this work has been done in Rodney Brooks's laboratory at MIT. His goal is not simply to build machines that are like humans but to alter our perception of the potential capabilities of robots. Our current attitude toward intelligent robots, he asserts, is simply a reflection of our own view of ourselves. In Flesh and Machines, Brooks challenges that view by suggesting that human nature can be seen to possess the essential characteristics of a machine. Our instinctive rejection of that idea, he believes, is itself a conditioned response: we have programmed ourselves to believe in our `tribal specialness' as proof of our uniqueness. Provocative, persuasive, compelling, and unprecedented, Flesh and Machines presents a vision of our future and our future selves."

  Rodney A. Brooks is Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is also the Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of iRobot Corporation.

  David Cliff, Inman Harvey, and P. Husbands, "Explorations in Evolutionary Robotics", Adaptive Behavior 2 (1993), pp. 73-110.

  "Even a Robot Cricket Always Gets Her Mate", Science 266 (December 1994), page 1809.

  D. Kortenkamp, R. P. Bonasso, and R. Murphy (eds.), Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robots, MIT Press, 1998, 0-262-61137-6.

  Abstract: From the book blurb: "The mobile robot systems described in this book were selected from among the best available implementations by leading universities and research laboratories."

  P. G. Morasso and V. Sanguineti (eds.), Self-Organization, Computational Maps, and Motor Control, North-Holland, 1997.

  Abstract: "In the study of the computational structure of biological/robotic sensorimotor systems, distributed models have gained center stage in recent years, with a range of issues including self-organization, non-linear dynamics, field computing etc. This multidisciplinary research area is addressed here by a multidisciplinary team of researchers..."

  Robin R. Murphy, An Introduction to AI Robotics: Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents, MIT Press, December 2000, 466 pp., ISBN 0-262-13383-0.

  Abstract (from an Amazon.com editorial review): "This text covers all the material needed to understand the principles behind the AI approach to robotics and to program an artificially intelligent robot for applications involving sensing, navigation, planning, and uncertainty. Robin Murphy is extremely effective at combining theoretical and practical rigor with a light narrative touch. ... Each chapter includes objectives, review questions, and essays. Many chapters contain one or more case studies showing how the concepts were implemented on real robots."

  Stefano Nolfi and Dario Floreano, Evolutionary Robotics: The Biology, Intelligence, and Technology of Self-Organizing Machines, MIT Press (A Bradford Book), December 2000, 384 pages, ISBN: 0-262-14070-5.

  Abstract (from the publisher): "Evolutionary robotics is a new technique for the automatic creation of autonomous robots. Inspired by the Darwinian principle of selective reproduction of the fittest, it views robots as autonomous artificial organisms that develop their own skills in close interaction with the environment and without human intervention. Drawing heavily on biology and ethology, it uses the tools of neural networks, genetic algorithms, dynamic systems, and biomorphic engineering. The resulting robots share with simple biological systems the characteristics of robustness, simplicity, small size, flexibility, and modularity. ... This book describes the basic concepts and methodologies of evolutionary robotics and the results achieved so far. An important feature is the clear presentation of a set of empirical experiments of increasing complexity. Software with a graphical interface, freely available on a Web page, will allow the reader to replicate and vary (in simulation and on real robots) most of the experiments."

  Stefano Nolfi is Coordinator of the Division of Neural Systems and Artificial Life, Institute of Psychology, National Research Council, Rome. Dario Floreano is Assistant Professor of Biorobotics and Adaptive Systems, Institute of Robotics, Department of icroengineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne.

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