Selected Publications:
Title:
M.S.Wilson and M.J.Neal, "Diminishing Returns of Engineering Effort in
Telerobotic Systems", in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and
Cybernetics - Part A:Systems and Humans, Special Issue on Socially
Intelligent Agents - The Human in the Loop, K. Dautenhahn Ed., September
2001, volume 31, number 5, pp 459-465, IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society, ISSN 0921-8890.
Abstract
Robotic systems range from teleoperated (where the human operator is
in full control of all aspects of the robot's behaviour) to fully
autonomous (where no human intervention takes place). The word
``telerobotic'' describes robotic systems which, although guided by a
human, have a degree of autonomous behaviour.
This paper examines the trade off between the increasing design and
implementation effort necessary as the system moves through the
continuum from teleoperated to autonomous, and the amount of human
intervention required. A case study of a human ``shepherd''
interacting with a robotic ``sheepdog'' which directs a robotic
``sheep'' is used.
Title:
M.S.Wilson and M.J.Neal, "Telerobotic Sheepdogs: how useful is
autonomous behaviour?", in Proceedings of the 6th International
Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour, J.A.Meyer, A.Berthoz,
D.Floreano, H.L.Roitblat, and S.W.Wilson, Eds. 2000, pp 125-134, MIT
Press, ISSN 1089-4365, ISBN 0-262-63200-4.
Abstract
A system modelling the interaction which takes place between a
shepherd, his dog and a sheep is presented. The human shepherd
interacts with a ``dog'' which is a mobile robot, which in
turn controls a ``sheep'' which is a second mobile robot.
This system provides a testbed for the study of how behaviour
repertoire impacts on the number of interactions required to perform
a task.
The robots' functionality and behaviour are presented and the
commands available to the shepherd are detailed. The results of
some experiments are presented which investigate the effect of
introducing larger repertoires of behaviour into the dog robot.
These experiments are statistically evaluated in terms of the number
of interactions which are required from the shepherd with a variety
of sheep displaying various patterns of behaviour.
Title:
M.S. Wilson, "Preston: A system for the evaluation of behaviour
sequences," in Interdisciplinary Approaches to Robot Learning, J.Demiris
and A.Birk, Eds., chapter 9. World Scientific, June 2000, Vol. 24 of
Series in Robotics and Intelligent Systems. ISBN
981-02-4320-0.
Abstract
Many robot control systems have been evolved within
simulated environments. Some of these have been transferred to real
robots. Several have been evolved completely on real robots. Each
of these methods has its drawbacks. This paper presents a system,
Preston, which evolves robot controllers in the form of sequences of
behaviours. These sequences are tested on a real robot and the
successful results are fed back into another loop of the evolution.
This paper concentrates on the development of some simple low level
primitive behaviours, and how evolved sequences of these act in the
real world. The repeatability of the low level behaviours is
examined, along with the effect this has on the evolved behavioural
sequences.
Title:
M.S. Wilson, C.M. King, and J.E. Hunt,
``Evolving hierarchical robot behaviours,''
Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 22, no. 3-4, pp.
215-230, December 1997, Special Issue on Robot Learning: The New Wave, ISSN 0921-8890.
Abstract
Inspired by the work of Brooks, many researchers involved in
programming robots have turned to the behaviour-based approach. At
present, the behaviours are designed by hand and hard-wired into the
architecture. The work presented in this paper looks at using an
evolutionary algorithm approach (based on the Genetic Algorithm) to
construct behaviours. Building from well defined primitive behaviours,
hierarchies can be evolved to produce more complex behaviour. The
behaviours in the evolutionary system are tested in simulation, but
the best are then tested on a mobile robot for grounding in the real
world. This allows the evolutionary process to rapidly drive the
development of the behaviours using simulation while also ensuring
their suitability in the real world. In the paper we show how this
evolutionary process evolves practical hierarchical behaviours for the
detection of a goal object in a series of mazes.
Title:
M.S. Wilson,
``Reliability and flexibility - a mutually exclusive problem for
robotic assembly?,''
IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, vol. 12, no. 2,
pp. 343-347, April 1996,
Special Issue on Assembly and Task Planning for Manufacturing, ISSN
1042-296X.
Abstract
One problem often encountered when performing assembly using robots is
how to deal with variation and uncertainty in the workcell. Either
the workcell becomes tightly constrained, thus losing the flexibility
of the system, or errors occur, which reduces the reliability of the
system.
This paper attempts to address this problem using a hybrid
architecture. A planning system produces a high level ordering of the
assembly in terms of part motions, which are translated into robot
motions by an adaptive run-time execution system. The execution system
contains a flexible hierarchy of competent modular units which combine
to perform the assembly reliably.
The work in this paper attempts to reduce the complexity found in
assembly planning and to provide a reactive run-time system which can
deal with uncertainty and variation without reference to a
computationally expensive global world model.
The background to this work is presented, along with an experimental
system designed to test out the ideas. Conclusions about the
usefulness of the system are drawn at the end of the paper.