IRI-9625041 The research goal of this project is to develop intelligent robots that combine cognitive capabilities such as reasoning and language with sophisticated perceptual and motor capabilities in a natural manner. The project builds on previous work by extending a real-time visual routine processing system to handle the tracking of multiple deformable objects and developing an agent architecture that provides the ability to pass parameters and represent the world in terms of high-level semantic constructs as in conventional knowledge representation languages but also retains the circuit-level parallelism and reactivity of behavior-based and connectionist systems. These technologies are being developed in the context of implementing useful functionality such as message and package delivery, and following high level instructions. The educational goal of this project is to work toward a unified first-year engineering curriculum that teaches physics concepts together with supporting skills in mathematics and computer science and relates these concepts immediately to engineering practice by allowing students to build intelligent mechatronic devices such as robots.
