Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and analysis of all relevant aspects of the environment to enable the robot to
see potential paths and recognize potential hazards. Actuators run motor and
drive trains to move the robot. Finally, complex software analyzes the current
situation in light of the goals and determine the best path to take to reach
the destination.
1.4.3 Immobots or Immobile Robots
Immobot is a recent term described by Williams and Nayak [
193
]. An immobot
is a large distributed network of sensors and actuators under the guidance of a
computerized control system. While immobots share core robotic technologies,
they differ in structure and perspective. Immobots have a robotic control
system surrounded by a large number of fixed sensors and actuators connected
by a network. These sensors and actuators are physically embedded in the
environment they are attempting to measure and control, and the sensors can
be located at great distances from the control system.
The primary objectives of immobots are different from those of robots.
Robots spend considerable resources (hardware, consumables, and software)
on externally focused activities such as navigation, sensing the world, and en-
vironmental manipulation. The immobot's sensors and actuators are fixed into
their environment and their focus is internal. Their resources are dedicated
to managing the environment they control to get the system into appropriate
configurations to achieve objectives and to monitor and mitigate problems
that occur. Immobots often monitor their systems for years, and yet when
certain events occur, they need to react in real-time.
1.5 Summary
Incorporating further degrees of autonomy and autonomicity into future space
missions will be crucial not only in reducing costs, but also in making some
missions possible at all. The following chapters give an overview of how
space and ground software has operated in the past, the enabling technol-
ogy to make autonomous and autonomic missions possible, some applications
of autonomy in past systems, and future missions where this technology will
be critical.
