Exam 1 will be in class on Thursday, February 13th. It will be closed
book, closed notes. Be sure to bring a calculator.
Material covered:
All material covered in class through Thursday, February 6th, will be on
the exam.
Readings 1 through 9 will be covered on the exam. BE SURE TO READ ALL
THIS MATERIAL
Study Questions
Use the following questions as a guide for studying for Exam #1.
There is no guarantee that these questions will be the ones asked on the
exam, but they are a good indicator of what to expect.
General Issues:
Given a list of key terms we have discussed in the class, match
them to their proper definition (multiple choice).
What are the advantages of multi-robot systems?
What are the disadvantages of multi-robot systems?
Biological Inspirations, Swarming/Flocking:
Give two reasons for studying biological systems for
multi-robot teams: one from the engineering perspective, and
one from the scientific perspective.
Explain how stigmergy is used in ant societies.
Briefly explain how the swarm analogy can be used to generate novel
improvisational music.
What are basis behaviors, as defined by Mataric?
Metrics and Evaluation
What is the difference between a parameter and a metric?
List two task-dependent metrics for multi-robot teams and two
task-independent metrics for multi-robot teams.
What is a major limitation of Balch's simple social entropy
metric that the hierarchic social entropy metric addresses?
Given the mathematical definition of the simple social entropy
metric, apply it to specific examples of heterogeneous teams to
calculate the simple social entropy measure (using a calculator).
Given 2-3 specific heterogeneous teams and their corresponding
dendograms, map them to a chart that illustrates the hierarchic
social entropy value and determine which team is most
heterogeneous. (That is, give the top two rows of something like
Figure 4.16 in your text, generate the bottom row of Figure 4.16
and indicate relative ordering of heterogeneity (no need for specific
hierarchic social entropy calculations).)
Search/Coverage
What are the 3 primary types of search and coverage, as
defined by Gage?
Briefly explain the tradeoffs of random vs. coordinated search
strategies as a function of sensor cost and accuracy.
Sensor Networks
Give 3 different examples of how embedded sensor networks can be
used.
Explain the one primary difference between sensor networks that are
Address-Centric
and those that are Data-Centric.
Explain the concept of Directed Diffusion as it applies
to sensor networks.
Describe an organizational technique that would be useful in dealing with
energy-constrained nodes in a sensor network.
Pseudocode
Write pseudocode to generate a specific distributed robot behavior
(the specific behavior will be specified; e.g., blanket search/coverage,
pile collection, etc.).