The Robotics Primer Workbook Developed by  USC, iRobot® and Microsoft® Robotics Studio

Deliberative Control

Contents 1 Purpose 2 Overview 3 Hardware 4 Exercise 1: Maze Navigation 5 Exercise 2: Topological Path Planning

Purpose

This exercise demonstrates how to use deliberative control in a robot. Deliberative control refers to the process of reasoning on state information to produce control output. Refer to Chapter 13 of "The Robotics Primer".

Overview

Deliberative control is a classic control strategy. It grew out of AI research where it was theorized human brains used this method for decision making. Deliberative control relies on reasoning on state information. If the state space if small (simple and few senors), then deliberative control is feasible. However, most realistic scenarios involve very large state spaces. In these scenarios deliberative control takes too long to process the state information. In this exercise we will use a simple maze environment to demonstration delibertive control and planning.

Hardware

We are doing this with two or three sonar sensors

Exercise 1: Maze Navigation

In this exercise, the focus is on planning a path using occupancy grids or topological maps.

Navigation:Exercise1-Path Planning

Exercise 2: Topological Path Planning

Navigation:Exercise2-Topological Path Planning