Embodied Elevators

Kenneth C. Barr
May 17, 2001
MIT 6.836

Abstract

This is the abstract from the Final Report linked below.

Embodied Intelligence focuses on designing robots as productive creatures with layers of simple behavior rather than the sense-model-plan-act machines that characterize early robotics. To this end, the subsumption architecture was developed as a way of thinking about and designing robots by accumulating individual behaviors (Brooks and Breazeal 31). This project report describes my investigation into applying these concepts to the realm of elevators. Whether or not an embodied elevator performs better than a conventional elevator remains undecided, however my methodology and results reconfirm the merits of creature-based design. The original project proposal, a slide presentation, and the source code described in the paper can be found below


Initial Proposal (47k .pdf)
Presentation (167k zipped Powerpoint 2000)
Final Report (204k zipped Word 2000)
Source Code (21k .tar.gz)