Requirements
Your tasks in this assignment are to conduct some research on the latest agent technologies. Based on the results, you should suggest an architecture and high-level design to model the following case.
You are required to
Robots are being used to assist humans, not just physically but emotionally
1) Study carefully the case study below.
2) Investigate relevant agent technologies
3) Provide a high-level design of the system which will support the functions of the robots.
Case: Useful stuff collecting and Vacuuming
Two kinds of robots are designed to clean up a room once a day (Figure 1). Robotic stuff collectors (C1 and C2) are used to collect any useful stuff on the floor and Robotic vacuum cleaners (V1 and V2) are used to remove rubbish
The room surrounds by four walls. There is one inner wall as well ((1,7) to (8,7) in Figure 1). It is full of useful stuff (shown as S in Figure 1) and rubbish (shown as R in Figure 1). The floor is arranged in grid slots. Both useful stuff collecting and vacuuming operations are processed grid slot by grid slot. The robotic vacuum cleaners can clean the floor only if there is no useful stuff.
For example, V1 can vacuum the grid slot (1, 5) at the beginning, but it cannot vacuum the grid slot (5, 2) until the useful stuff in the grid slot has been collected. Also, no two robots can be located at the same grid slot at the same time. The room is considered to be cleaned when there is no useful stuff and rubbish on the floor.
There are four power-and-information units (PIU) located at (1,1), (16, 1), (1, 18) and (16, 18). They are identical and used to provide power and information to the robots:
– The robots are rechargeable machines and they will be recharged whenever they are on any PIU.
– There are several cameras mounted on the walls and the cameras are connected to the PIUs such that the state of the room can be monitored. So, the robots can monitor the situation of all the grid slots when they are on any PIU. For example, when a robot is on a PIU, it can recognise that there is some useful stuff or rubbish on the grid slots (3,4), (6,5) etc. However, PIU cannot distinguish whether it is useful stuff or rubbish. Also, once the robot leaves the PIU, it cannot get any further updated information from the PIUs.
The robots can detect and distinguish whether there is any useful stuff or rubbish or nothing on the grid slot where they are located and on the grid slots just next to the grid slot where they are located. On the other hand, the robots record all the actions they have done and the results (e.g., checking useful stuff, checking rubbish, useful stuff collecting (robotic stuff collectors), rubbish removal (robotic vacuum cleaners)) after they leave the PIU. They will share the information with the PIUs after they reach any PIU.
The robots can communicate with one another when the distance between two robots is less than 2 grid slots. Also, they should be able to resolve conflicts if any.
The robots also should go back to any PIU after the room is cleaned. No two robots can be located at the same grid slot or PIU simultaneously.
Marking Criteria – Individual Report (up to 2000 words)
In the report, the following information should be included.
1. What are the requirements?
