Hunt and Gather Robotics

This paper describes a generic approach to generating intelligence systems for robots that perform an operation we call “hunt and gather”. While, there have been various solutions proposed for complete systems that perform hunt and gather tasks within specified domains, the focus of the research presented here is to develop a minimalist system that can be used across a variety of problems without extensive reprogramming. A robot, CORGI, has been developed to perform hunt and gather tasks of various types. The robot uses a widely applicable sensor: vision. This vision sensor and the robot behaviour generation mechanism can be adapted to new environments by re-training rather than by re-programming. The robot can perform hunt and gather operations in real time with all computation, including vision, carried out on a commonly available $20 microprocessor.