engineering

Ronald C. Arkin

Ronald C. Arkin is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ronald C. Arkin rather than just read about it. In short: Ronald Craig Arkin (born 1949) is an American roboticist and roboethicist, and a Regents' Professor in the School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is known for the motor schema technique in robot navigation and for his book Behavior-Based Robotics.

Key takeaways

Ronald C. Arkin belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ronald C. Arkin to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ronald C. Arkin from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ronald Craig Arkin (born 1949) is an American roboticist and roboethicist, and a Regents' Professor in the School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is known for the motor schema technique in robot navigation and for his book Behavior-Based Robotics.

Biography

Education Ronald Arkin received a B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1971 and an M.S. from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1977. He was a faculty member of Hawthorne College in Antrim, New Hampshire from 1977 to 1989, serving as the Computer Science Depart Chair from 1986 to 1989. In 1985, he joined the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics and VISIONS groups at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and received a Ph.D. in 1987. His doctoral thesis Towards Cosmopolitan Robots: Intelligent Navigation in Extended Man-Made Environments was supervised by Edward M. Riseman.

Career Shortly after receiving his Ph.D., Ronald Arkin joined the School of Information and Computer Science (now College of Computing) at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founded the Mobile Robot Laboratory. He became a Regents' Professor in 2002 and was the first person to hold such honor in the College of Computing's history. From August, 1997 to August, 1998, Arkin was a STINT Visiting Professor at the Centre for Autonomous Systems, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He served as the Sabbatical Chair for the Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratory, Tokyo, Japan, from June, 2005 to October, 2005, and was also a member of the Laboratory for analysis and architecture of systems at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Toulouse, France. In 2006, the United States Department of Defense contracted Arkin to conduct a study to determine if military robots could be made to operate ethically. The goal is to create a robot with an "artificial conscience" such that, for example, it might refrain from firing weaponry when children were detected, or to even understand the laws of war and apply them in battle. “My intention in designing this is that robots will make less mistakes—hopefully far less mistakes—than humans do in the battlefield,” Arkin says.

Research Mobile robots and unmanned aerial vehicles Behavior-based reactive control Action-oriented perception Hybrid deliberative/reactive software architectures Robot survivability Multiagent robotic systems Biorobotics Human-robot interaction Roboethics Learning in autonomous systems.

Students Robin Murphy (Summer, 1992). Thesis: An Architecture for Intelligent Sensor Fusion. Founder of rescue robot and currently a professor at the Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. Erika Rogers (Fall, 1992). Thesis: Visual Interaction: A Link Between Perception and Problem-Solving. Currently a professor at the California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, California. Douglas MacKenzie (Spring 1997). Thesis: A Design Methodology for the Configuration of Behavior-based Mobile Robots. President and Founder of Mobile Intelligence Co. Tucker Balch (Fall, 1998). Thesis: Behavioral Diversity in Learning Robot Teams. Currently an associate professor at the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. Khaled Ali (Spring, 1999). Thesis: Multiagent Robotics: Relating Systems to Tasks. Currently a Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Alexander Stoytchev (Summer, 2007). Thesis: Robot Tool Behavior: A Developmental Approach to Autonomous Tool Use. Currently an assistant professor at the Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Eric Martinson (Fall 2007). Thesis: Acoustical Awareness for Intelligent Robotic Action. Alan Wagner (Fall 2010). Thesis: The Role of Trust and Relationships in Human-Robot Social Interaction. Currently an associate professor at The Pennsylvania State University and a research associate with the Rock Ethics Institute. Zsolt Kira (Spring 2010). Thesis: Communication and Alignment of Grounded Symbolic Knowledge Among Heterogeneous Robots. Currently an assistant professor at the School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Books Arkin, R. C. (1998). Behavior-Based Robotics. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01165-5. Arkin, R. C. (1987). Towards Cosmopolitan Robots: Intelligent Navigation in Extended Man-made Environments. University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Papers Arkin, R. C. (1989). "Motor schema-based mobile robot navigation". The International Journal of Robotics Research. 8 (4): 92–112. doi:10.1177/027836498900800406. S2CID 32185930. Balch, T.; Arkin, R. C. (1998). "Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams". IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. 14 (6): 926–939. Bibcode:1998ITRA...14..926B. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.71.6632. doi:10.1109/70.736776. {{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |citeseerx= (help) Balch, T.; Arkin, R. C. (1994). "Communication in reactive multiagent robotic systems". Autonomous Robots. 1 (1): 27–52. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.41.543. doi:10.1007/BF00735341. S2CID 378655. {{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |citeseerx= (help)

References

External links Home Page Mathematics Genealogy Project profile Mobile Robot Laboratory

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ronald C. Arkin

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ronald C. Arkin claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ronald C. Arkin before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ronald C. Arkin ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ronald C. Arkin

In research: Ronald C. Arkin appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ronald C. Arkin in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ronald C. Arkin is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1949 births, American artificial intelligence researchers, American control theorists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ronald C. Arkin outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ronald C. Arkin in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ronald C. Arkin means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ronald C. Arkin out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ronald C. Arkin in simple terms?

Why does Ronald C. Arkin matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ronald C. Arkin?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ronald C. Arkin.