Autonomous

Mobile Robots
Introduction to
Roland
Illah R.
SIEGWART
NOURBAKHSH
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Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots
Roland Siegwart and Illah R. Nourbakhsh
Mobile robots range from the teleoperated Sojourner on the Mars Pathfinder
mission to cleaning robots in the Paris Metro. Introduction to Autonomous
Mobile Robots offers students and other interested readers an overview of the
technology of mobilitythe mechanisms that allow a mobile robot to move
through a real world environment to perform its tasksincluding locomotion,
sensing, localization, and motion planning. It discusses all facets of mobile robotics,
including hardware design, wheel design, kinematics analysis, sensors and per-
ception, localization, mapping, and robot control architectures.
The design of any successful robot involves the integration of many different
disciplines, among them kinematics, signal analysis, information theory, artificial
intelligence, and probability theory. Reflecting this, the book presents the tech-
niques and technology that enable mobility in a series of interacting modules.
Each chapter covers a different aspect of mobility, as the book moves from low-
level to high-level details. The first two chapters explore low-level locomotory
ability, examining robots wheels and legs and the principles of kinematics. This is
followed by an in-depth view of perception, including descriptions of many off-
the-shelf sensors and an analysis of the interpretation of sensed data. The final
two chapters consider the higher-level challenges of localization and cognition,
discussing successful localization strategies, autonomous mapping, and navigation
competence. Bringing together all aspects of mobile robotics into one volume,
Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots can serve as a textbook for course-
work or a working tool for beginners in the field.
Roland Siegwart is Professor and Head of the Autonomous Systems Lab at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne. Illah R. Nourbakhsh is Associate
Professor of Robotics in the Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, at
Carnegie Mellon University.
This book is easy to read and well organized. The idea of providing a robot
functional architecture as an outline of the book, and then explaining each
component in a chapter, is excellent. I think the authors have achieved their
goals, and that both the beginner and the advanced student will have a clear
idea of how a robot can be endowed with mobility.
Raja Chatila, LAAS-CNRS, France
Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents series
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
http://mitpress.mit.edu
,!IA?G?-bfach!t,K,k,K,k
0-262-19502-X
4SSSiegwart /I0/04 I PM Page I
Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots
Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents
Ronald C. Arkin, editor
Robot Shaping: An Experiment in Behavior Engineering,
Marco Dorigo and Marco Colombetti, 1997
Behavior-Based Robotics,
Ronald C. Arkin, 1998
Layered Learning in Multiagent Systems: A Winning Approach to Robotic Soccer,
Peter Stone, 2000
Evolutionary Robotics: The Biology, Intelligence, and Technology of Self-Organizing
Machines,
Stefano Nolfi and Dario Floreano, 2000
Reasoning about Rational Agents,
Michael Wooldridge, 2000
Introduction to AI Robotics,
Robin R. Murphy, 2000
Strategic Negotiation in Multiagent Environments,
Sarit Kraus, 2001
Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation,
Matthew T. Mason, 2001
Designing Sociable Robots,
Cynthia L. Breazeal, 2002
Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots,
Roland Siegwart and Illah R. Nourbakhsh, 2004
Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots
Roland Siegwart and Illah R. Nourbakhsh
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechan-
ical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permis-
sion in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Times Roman by the authors using Adobe FrameMaker 7.0.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Siegwart, Roland.
Introduction to autonomous mobile robots / Roland Siegwart and Illah Nourbakhsh.
p. cm. (Intelligent robotics and autonomous agents)
A Bradford book.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-19502-X (hc : alk. paper)
1. Mobile robots. 2. Autonomous robots. I. Nourbakhsh, Illah Reza, 1970 . II. Title. III. Series.
TJ211.415.S54 2004
629.892dc22 2003059349