Representing spatial experience and solving spatial problems in a simulated robot environment

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with spatial aspects of perception and action in a simple robot. To this end, the problem of designing a robot-controller for a robot in a simulated robot-environment system is considered. The environment is a two-dimensional tabletop with movable polygonal shapes on it. The robot has an eye which 'saes' an area of the tabletop centred on itself, with a resolution which decreases from the centre to the periphery. Algorithms are presented for simulating the motion and collision of two dimensional shapes in this environment. These algorithms use representations of shape both as a sequence, of boundary points and as a region in a digital image. A method is outlined for constructing and updating the world model of the robot as new visual input is received from the eye. It is proposed that, in the world model, the spatial problems of path-finding and object-moving be based on algorithms that find the skeleton of the shape of empty space and of the shape of the moved object. A new iterative algorithm for finding the skeleton, with the property that the skeleton of a connected shape is connected, is presented. This is applied to path-finding and simple object-moving problems. Finally, directions for future work, are outlined.