Roboticists call these rules "behaviors," and they are simple things like if you hit a wall, turn away from it. #How to program a light sensor in robotc how toInstead, it just needs to know how to react in a few different situations, and it will be able to clean a room. Likewise, a robotic vacuum doesn't need to know the exact dimensions of a room to clean it. An individual ant doesn't have much brainpower, but it has a simple set of rules that allow it to search for food, return to the nest and guide others. How? They realized that, by following a simple set of rules, these simple animals could create complex behaviors. This movement reasoned that an ant isn't smart, but it navigates the world. He was part of a new wave of artificial intelligence (AI) research that stepped away from complex problems like teaching a computer to play chess to focus on the basics of intelligence. Most modern robot vacuums were born of the work of Rodney Brooks, a roboticist at MIT (and one of the founders of iRobot, makers of the Roomba) who was studying simple animals like insects and flatworms. What gives a robotic vacuum the smarts to work out what it has(and has not) cleaned yet? The answer might surprise you: insects. So, the robot knows a few things about the world as it moves around it. Smarts: How a robot vacuum navigates the world These are the things that a basic robot vacuum will need to know to navigate the world around it. This combination of sensors means that the robot knows a few things about the world around it: how far it has gone, things it has bumped into and things it could fall off from. The path of the iRobot Roomba 980 in our tests. Different models may include additional sensors (such as a dust scanner to see how much dust is being picked up), but those are the basic sensors that all robotic vacuums include. From this (and any difference between wheels, which indicates a turn), the robot can figure out how far it has traveled. They are called optical encoders because they use a light sensor to detect how many times the wheels have rotated. Optical encoders are the most important: these sensors on the wheels of the robot tell it how far it has gone. Wall sensors are like cliff sensors, but in a different direction: they tell the robot when it is close to a wall or other object, so it can follow the wall. The name of the bump sensors also gives away what they do: if the robot vacuum bumps into something (like a wall or a chair leg), the impact triggers the sensor. If there is a sudden increase in the distance to the floor, that means the robot is getting close to a stair edge or something similar, so it will back off to avoid falling over it (hence the "cliff sensor" name). Cliff sensors measure the distance between the robot base and the floor, usually by bouncing infra-red light off the floor. Instead, they use various types of sensors to detect and measure the worlds around them and their own progress through it, including cliff sensors, bump sensors, wall sensors and optical encoders. Robotic vacuum cleaners don't use cameras to see the world. Sensors: How a robot vacuum sees the world So, how do these marvels of modern cleaning technology navigate their way around your home? There are two parts to the answer: sensors and smarts. We have reviewed products like the iRobot Roomba 980 that include a scary amount of electronic smarts. These robotic suckers scoot around the floor, picking up dust and dirt and then returning to their electronic nests to recharge. We've all seen robot vacuum cleaners scuttling around people's homes.
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