[comp.ai] "Insect Robots" How do they work?

abbott@aero.org (Russell J. Abbott) (03/26/91)

The Discover article refers to a "subsumption" architecture in
explaining how Brooks' insects work.  Does anyone know what that really
means--besides what is written in the article.  How, for example, does
the robot insect coordinate its legs in learning to walk?  What
communication/control paths exist?

Thanks,

id8rld06@serss0.fiu.edu (Michael N Johnston) (03/26/91)

    Please bear with me as this is my first post.

    Since the "Insect Robots" article in Discover, I have been trying
to gather additional information on Brooks' subsumption architecture
and have found several papers and references to this architecture.
    I have also been trying to find additional information on Pattie
Maes' work in having the robots teach themselves to walk. On
this, however, I have had no luck. I even had MIT send my a bibleo.
of papers from researchers in the AI lab at MIT hoping that it would
list some of Maes' work. No luck (several references for Brooks, but
none for Maes).
    If you could refer me to some of her work, it would be most
appreciated.

=====================================================================

Michael Johnston
email: id8rld06@serss0.fiu.edu
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It works
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moskowit@paul.rutgers.edu (Len Moskowitz) (03/27/91)

Maes, Pattie, and Brooks, Rodney A., "Learning to Coordinate
Behaviors," Proceedings Eighth National Conference on Artificial
Intelligence, AAAI-90, AAAI Press/The MIT Press

iaf@ely.cl.cam.ac.uk (Innes Ferguson) (04/12/91)

>I have also been trying to find additional information on Pattie
>Maes' work

@article{maes90a,
author = "Maes, Pattie",
title = "Situated Agents Can Have Goals",
journal = "Robotics and Autonomous Systems",
year = 1990,
volume = 6,
number = "1&2",
pages = "49--70"}

@inproceedings{maes90b,
author = "Maes, Pattie and Brooks, Rodney A.",
title = "Learning to Coordinate Behaviours",
booktitle = "Proceedings Conference of the American Association for Artificial
Intelligence",
year = 1990,
pages = "796--802"}

Regards... Innes

=============================================================================
Innes A. Ferguson          Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge,
                           Pembroke St., Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
                           BITNET: iaf@cl.cam.ac.uk   JANET: iaf@uk.ac.cam.cl
                           Tel.: +44 223 334421
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