Skip to main content

Affordances in an Ecology of Physically Embedded Intelligent Systems

  • Conference paper
Book cover Towards Affordance-Based Robot Control

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 4760))

Abstract

The concept of Ecology of Physically Embedded Intelligent Systems, or Peis-Ecology, combines insights from the fields of autonomous robotics and ambient intelligence to provide a new solution to building intelligent robotic systems in the service of people. The concept of Peis-Ecology also offers an interesting setting to study the applicability of Gibson’s notion of affordances to an ecology of robots. In this paper we introduce this concept, and discuss its potential and implications both from an application point of view and from an ecological (Gibsonian) point of view. We also discuss some new scientific challenges introduced by a Peis-Ecology, present our current steps toward its realization, and point at a few experimental results that show the viability of this concept.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Arregui, D., Fernstrom, C., Pacull, F., Gilbert, J.: STITCH: Middleware for ubiquitous applications. In: Proc. of the Smart Object Conf., Grenoble, France (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Barker, R.G.: Ecological psychology. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA (1968)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Broxvall, M., Coradeschi, S., Loutfi, A., Saffiotti, A.: An ecological approach to odour recognition in intelligent environments. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Orlando, FL, pp. 2066–2071 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Broxvall, M., Gritti, M., Saffiotti, A., Seo, B.S., Cho, Y.J.: Peis ecology: Integrating robots into smart environments. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Orlando, FL, pp. 212–218 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Broxvall, M., Loutfi, A., Saffiotti, A.: Interacting with a robot ecology using task templates. In: Ro-Man. Proc. of the IEEE Int. Symp. on Robot and Human Interactive Communcation Jeju island, Korea (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  6. The JXTA community. The project JXTA web site, http://www.jxta.org

  7. Coradeschi, S., Saffiotti, A.: An introduction to the anchoring problem. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 43(2-3), 85–96 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Coradeschi, S., Saffiotti, A.: Symbiotic robotic systems: Humans, robots, and smart environments. IEEE Intelligent Systems 21(3), 82–84 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Dressler, F.: Self-organization in autonomous sensor/actuator networks. In: Proc. of the 19th IEEE Int. Conf. on Architecture of Computing Systems (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Duchon, A.P., Warren, W.H., Kaelbling, L.P.: Ecological robotics. Adaptive Behavior 6(3), 473–507 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Gibson, J.J.: An ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Gritti, M., Broxvall, M., Saffiotti, A.: Reactive self-configuration of an ecology of robots. In: Proc. of the ICRA Workshop on Networked Robot Systems, Rome, Italy (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Heft, H.: Ecological Psychology in Context. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kaminsky, A.: Infrastructure for distributed applications in ad hoc networks of small mobile wireless devices. Technical report, Rochester Institute of Technology, IT Lab, ( May 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kim, J.H., Kim, Y.D., Lee, K.H.: The third generation of robotics: Ubiquitous robot. In: Proc. of the 2nd Int. Conf. on Autonomous Robots and Agents, Palmerston North, New Zealand (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  16. LeBlanc, K., Saffiotti, A.: Issues of perceptual anchoring in ubiquitous robotic systems. In: Proc. of the ICRA Workshop on Omniscent Space, Rome, Italy (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lee, J.H., Hashimoto, H.: Intelligent space – concept and contents. Advanced Robotics 16(3), 265–280 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Lemaire, O., Ohba, K., Hirai, S.: Dynamic integration of ubiquitous robotic systems using ontologies and the rt middleware. In: Proc. of the 3rd Int. Conf. on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence, Seoul, Korea (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Lundh, R., Karlsson, L., Saffiotti, A.: Plan-based configuration of an ecology of robots. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Rome, Italy, pp. 64–70 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Margulis, L., Sagan, D.: Microcosmos. Summit Books, New York (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  21. McGrenere, J., Ho, W.: Affordances: Clarifying and evolving a concept. In: Proc. of the Graphcis Interface Conf., Toronto, pp. 179–186 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Michaels, C.F: Affordances: Four points of debate. Ecological Psychology 15(2), 135–148 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Norman, D.: The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Network Robot Forum. www.scat.or.jp/nrf/English/

  25. The PEIS ecology project. Official web site, www.aass.oru.se/~peis/

  26. Rao, J., Su, X.: A survey of automated web service composition methods. In: Proc. of the 1st Int. Workshop on Semantic Web Services and Web Process Composition, San Diego, California, USA (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Raubal, M., Moratz, R.: A functional model for affordance-based agents. In: Rome, E., Doherty, P., Dorffner, G., Hertzberg, J. (eds.) Towards Affordance-Based Robot Control. LNCS, vol. 4760, pp. 106–121. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Saffiotti, A., Broxvall, M.: PEIS ecologies: Ambient intelligence meets autonomous robotics. In: sOc-EUSAI. Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Smart Objects and Ambient Intelligence, Grenoble, France, pp. 275–280 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Sgorbissa, A., Zaccaria, R.: The artificial ecosystem: a distributed approach to service robotics. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 3531–3536 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Siegemund, F.: A context-aware communication platform for smart objects. In: Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Pervasive Computing (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Tesauro, G., Chess, D.M., Walsh, W.E., Das, R., Segal, A., Whalley, I., Kephart, J.O., White, S.R.: A multi-agent systems approach to autonomic computing. In: Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 464–471 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Erich Rome Joachim Hertzberg Georg Dorffner

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Saffiotti, A., Broxvall, M. (2008). Affordances in an Ecology of Physically Embedded Intelligent Systems. In: Rome, E., Hertzberg, J., Dorffner, G. (eds) Towards Affordance-Based Robot Control. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4760. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77915-5_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77915-5_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-77914-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-77915-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics