Exam 2 will be in class on Thursday, March 13th. It will be closed
book, closed notes.
Material covered:
All material covered in class Tuesday, February 11th
through Thursday, March 6th, will be on
the exam.
Readings 10 and 12-17 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 #2.
There is no guarantee that these questions will be the ones asked on the
exam, but they are a good indicator of the type of questions to expect.
Communication:
What is the difference between explicit and implicit communication?
Give 2 examples of implicit communication in nature.
In defining a communications taxonomy, what are 3 "dimensions"
of communication that are important to characterize?
What were the fundamental findings of Balch and Arkin in comparing
no communication, state communication, and goal communication?
Formations:
Given a particular formation and formation control strategy, define
the sensing and communications requirements.
Give an example of a formation that is determined by constraints
other than distance and orientation.
What formation type would you recommend for (a) minimizing penetration
through a barrier, (b) maximizing surface area coverage per unit time,
(c) moving as a group through an obstacle field?
Define a metric for evaluating robot team performance in formation-keeping
(specify mathematically, using precise terms).
Herding:
Assume you have a genetic algorithm that can learn behaviors of
predators and prey for a herding application (like the Werner and Dyer paper
we read). Describe the effect/impact of learning the behaviors of
predators and prey
simulataneously. Discuss whether or not the two types of behaviors could be
learned separately. If so, how; if not, why not.
Show how Mataric's basis behaviors (homing, safe-wandering, dispersion,
aggregation, following) and higher-level group behaviors (flocking and
surrounding) can be combined to generate herding.
Tracking:
Assume you want to build an approach using potential fields that
enables multiple robots
to track multiple moving targets (similar to paper #14 by Parker). What would
be the source(s) of attractive potential field(s) in this application?
What would be the source(s) of the repulsive potential field(s) in this
application?
If you have many more targets than robots, how would you enable
robots to put higher preference on targets that are not being observed by
any other robot?
Describe a baseline program against which you would evaluate your
potential-field based target tracking program.
How would the potential-field based
target tracking approach need to be adapted to use it for tracking multiple
targets on the main floor of Claxton Complex?
Reconfigurable Robots:
What is the difference between lattice-type reconfigurable robots
and chain-type reconfigurable robots?
In the CONRO approach to reconfigurable robots, how does a module know
what effect a hormone should have on it?
In a lattice-type system, show which modules would "scrunch" and which
would expand in order to move a module through the crystal from a specified
starting position to a specified goal position.
Describe the high-level process of the grow-melt algorithm.
What is the purpose of the "grain" concept in Rus's Crystalline Robots?
Given a set of modules and a set of operations, show what the
final state of the system will be (for either the CONRO hormone approach or
the lattice-type approach, which will be specified).
Path Planning / Traffic Management:
For what types of applications is a pre-planning process for multi-robot path
generation important, and for what types of applications is a traffic management
approach more appropriate?
In the multi-robot path planning approach of Guo and Parker (paper #17),
what are the two major planning steps?
Describe what a coordination diagram represents and how it is used in the
multi-robot path planning process. What are the axes of a coordination diagram
and what do they represent?
What does a path from the origin to the point at the "far corner" (i.e.,
the point where all values along all axes are maximized) represent?
List 4 traffic rules that would be useful for multiple robots operating
along a fully automated interstate highway system (i.e., only robot vehicles
are present).
Provide a set of rules that would prevent deadlock
if 4 robots arrive at a 4-way stop sign at the same time.
Pseudocode
Write pseudocode to generate a specific distributed robot behavior
(the specific behavior will be specified).