(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011)
Dantam, Neil; Stilman, Mike
We present a new Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanism and library. Ach is uniquely suited for coordinating perception, control drivers, and algorithms in real-time systems that sample data from physical processes. Ach eliminates the Head-of-Line Blocking problem for applications that always require access to the newest message. Ach is efficient, robust, and formally verified. It has been tested and demonstrated on a variety of physical robotic systems. Finally, the source code for Ach is available under an Open Source BSD-style license.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010)
Dantam, Neil; Stilman, Mike
We present the Motion Grammar: a novel unified representation
for task decomposition, perception, planning, and hybrid control
that provides a computationally tractable way to control robots in
uncertain environments with guarantees on completeness and correctness.
The grammar represents a policy for the task which is
parsed in real-time based on perceptual input. Branches of the syntax
tree form the levels of a hierarchical decomposition, and the
individual robot sensor readings are given by tokens. We implement
this approach in the interactive game of Yamakuzushi on a
physical robot resulting in a system that repeatably competes with
a human opponent in sustained game-play for matches up to six
minutes.