AI and Robotics; Flexibility and Integration

SUMMARY This paper reviews some current research problems in Artificial Intelligence applied to robotics, in particular the processing of sensory information and robot programming. It is perceived that much progress has been made in applying AI techniques to particular isolated tasks, but the important theme at the leading edge of the AI-based robotics technology seems to be the interfacing of the subsystems into an integrated environment. This requires flexibility of the subsystems themselves. But on the other hand it also increases the flexibility of the integrated system in that it broadens the variety of ways for solving problems through functional combination of the subsystems. The presentation in this paper is illustrated by examples from the hardware and software environment of the advanced robotics research at the Turing Institute.